


Ashla and Bogan Duel in the Dust

by Darkarashi



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Gratuitious use of the Expanded Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, The Force turns out to be a great sex toy, The miraluka exist because I say so, alcohol use, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2018-10-28 04:10:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10823466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkarashi/pseuds/Darkarashi
Summary: Cassian Andor, hero of the Rebellion, so on and so forth, cannot seem to shake a particularly persistent shadow. She asks to speak to Chirrut, nothing more. He won't let her. He doesn't know her, and with everything that's happened since Scarif, he wants nothing to do with anyone who wants anything from his friends.It does seem, however...that he keeps running into her.





	1. First Chance (I can be friendly)

The battle of Scarif.

As the Force willed it.

A strange ship, a hissed warning in the ears of those who listened and a thread of Fate snapped under its own weight. No thousand voices cried out.

But Five were not silenced.

* * *

Months after Scarif, after the improbable rescue from a ship that no one could remember having given a callsign, Cassian found himself staring at the bottom of an empty glass on some planet, in some dive bar, waiting for some more instructions. The Rebel base had become too much for him. He only knew, tangentially, where everyone was. It was better this way.

He knew it was better this way.  

Far, far away from them all. Far and further away from the Rebellion. He still served, he was still loyal but…

* * *

The beach had been windswept, and it stank of rotting seaweed and blaster fire. In the distance, the horizon was searing light. Cassian closed his eyes against the sight, burying his face in Jyn’s neck. He was terrified, and he could not bear to stare the specter of his oncoming death in the eye. Jyn, he knew, was looking at it head on, wanting to see their death as it came to them. She had watched Jedha burn, unblinking, and Cassian had turned away then, as well.

The heat had been nearly unbearable, a scorching intensity that he felt roasting his skin, even before his clothes caught fire. The pain blinded him, and even with his eyes closed, all he saw was the white of the sky burning.

A shadow had no place in his memory – by all accounts, he and Jyn has been completely unconscious when they were found. But he remembered a shadow. He remembered relief where there had been pain, a breath of wonder, a hiss of a hatch sealing the heat out. He remembered a gentle press of softness were there had been pain, and then…darkness.

He woke up a week later, stretched out on a bed in a clean place, being tended to by the best medical personnel the Rebellion had stolen from the Empire, his friends in rooms adjacent to his. He had grilled the medical staff over what happened, but they had not known. Only that there had been a ship with no recognizable callsign, that had come out of nowhere, carrying them all, and before they had been able to figure out who the pilot was, they were pulling away to lay down suppressive fire to cover the escape of the ship.

The ship had not been seen since.

The nurses told him that Bodhi had babbled something about their rescuer needing to speak to Chirrut, but Chirrut and Baze both had been taken to the intensive care with severe wounds, and the ship had not been seen again. Not a breath of a clue about who had come to their rescue, no idea who it had been who had so deftly kept a tragedy isolated to a good portion of the rebel fleet.

They were heroes.

They kept saying they were heroes.

They put a medal on his neck, and a Princess kissed his cheek in congratulations.

* * *

He didn’t feel like a hero.

He felt raw, burned up from the inside out. He had gone down onto Scarif. He knew that as soon as his feet touched ground there that he was not going to leave Scarif. He had held Jyn close, breathed what he thought would be his last and he had been _at peace_.

And now his peace had been stolen from him. He was a hero. He was a hero and every time he returned to the base, he was surrounded by men and women who wanted nothing more than to be near him and hear stories of Jyn and Chirrut and Baze and Bodhi. Cassian was tired of it. He wanted quiet, and solitude, he wanted to do his job and not be fawned over.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it. He was here to meet a contact. They had gone dark around the time of Scarif and only just reached back out to the Rebellion. There was a suspicion that they had been turned, that this was a trap, and Cassian had been listening when it was discussed.

This wasn’t official business.

But that was his best business. The unofficial, the off the record.

He did that best.

His glass was empty, though. He shook the buzz of alcohol out of his ears and gestured for the bartender to bring him another. His credit chips were fast turning into credit chits and he had no leads that went anywhere. For a certainty, he was, if nothing else, being left alone. No one in the bar wanted to approach him, and he was just fine with that. If he couldn’t find the contact, he at least had alcohol.

His drink arrived minutes later, and with an appreciative nod, he reached for it. A hand came down to rest on his wrist.

“Captain, that should be enough, I think,” came a stern voice. “You aren’t as useful to me any drunker than this.”

Cassian took his hand out of their grasp, hand dropping down to his hip, ready to go for the gutshot against whoever was coming for him.

“Get your hand off the blaster, Captain.”

The voice turned to steel, and Cassian felt his hand jerk away from his weapon. Shocked, he pulled against whatever was holding his hand steady, and looked down to see what particular appendage was holding him, but there was nothing. His hand just didn’t move. No matter how he tensed and pulled, his hand remained where it was, suspended in the air.

“I want to have a polite conversation, but I’m not keen on being drawn on. We’re not in the most friendly of circumstance as it is. I don’t want to end up in prison.”

He turned to look at the person speaking to him, and ended up looking straight into a beaded mask of a –

“Miraluka?” he said, stunned, the word tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“ _Tcht_ , yes. Obviously. You are the Captain. I need to speak to one you rode with. He is called Chirrut. Where is he?”

“Chirrut?” he repeated, still stunned that he was looking at a _Miralukan_ of all things.

“Yes. Chirrut Îmwe. I need to speak with him. I have a message for him.”

He felt the pressure holding his hand still release and carefully, he shook his hand out, feeling for any damage or danger. The Miralukan (a _kriffing Miralukan_ ) sat next to him, holding a hand out for the bartenders attention and making an order under their breath. Cassian found himself reaching for his drink and downing it before the Miralukan could turn their attention back to him.

Miralukans had…kriffing hells, Miralukans could not – they had been killed en masse in the Jedi Purge, and were still hunted with regularity. Their home planet was a closely guarded secret, so closely guarded that in all the years since the Jedi Purge, not a single Miralukan had ever given the location of it away.

He had heard stories of Miralukans resisting even the most terrible of interrogations by the Empire, dying with the names of their Gods on their tongues instead of telling the Empire anything. They were a secretive people. Few went off planet before the Purge, and after thousands of their people had been slaughtered and tortured, the Rebellion had heard little of them.

From time to time, one would appear at the edges of the Rebellion, providing irreplaceable help, a beacon of the Force’s influence in darkest times, and…

Honestly, this one looked nothing like the stories said.

Cassian supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d had his own fair share of disappointment so far, and looking at a Miralukan who looked about as rough as he felt was certainly a fitting tribute to how this whole “hero of the Rebellion” business was shaping up.

The Miraluka, travel-worn and dirty, was easily somewhere around his height, if not a little taller, wearing a dark brown outfit beneath a black over-robe that reminded him too much of what Chirrut wore. There was no scarlet accent, like Chirrut preferred. No, the lining of their robe was a deep blue, flecked with what looked like gold…or dust from the road. Their hair – what there was of it, the Miraluka had a rather fashionable undercut – was pulled back into a knot at the top of their head. Beaded chains circled the knot, matching the chains that hung down from their simple eye-mask to brush the top of their high, chiseled cheekbones.

Their knuckles were scarred, still scabbed in some places from some recent scrap, and he could see the beginnings of a thick scar on the underside of their left wrist as they moved. Their bottom lip had a splash of ochre down the middle, a simple vanity that begged for further inspection. Cassian bit his own lip, swallowing a sudden hard knot in his throat.

It had been a while.

“Staring is rude, Captain,” the Miralukan drawled into their drink. “You’ll make someone nervous like that.”

He blinked. Miralukans were blind – the masks they were covered up the fact that they only had vestigial eye sockets where most humanoid species would have eyes. And sure, the Miralukans all had some skill with Force Sight so as to see, but he had never heard it being refined enough for being able to see where others were looking. He had, however, heard of plenty of people _pretend_ to be Miralukan.

 Almost as if the Miralukan knew what he was thinking, they wedged their thumb up under their mask and lifted just far enough for him to see the empty socket where an eye would’ve been.

Their mouth ticked into a veneer of a smile, and their eyebrow twitched. Cassian blinked away the sense that they were, somehow, mocking him. The Miralukan slid their mask down and went back to their drink. For a long while there was silence between the two of them in the over-loud bar. Cassian managed to get another drink ordered and down before the Miralukan could stop him, but he did hear a soft, disappointed sigh echo through the air.

He almost felt bad, but drinking felt better.

They were still there, silently sitting next to each other and tipsy, many drinks later. The world was spinning and Cassian was almost certain it was the alcohol and not anything nefarious. He had watched the Miraluka’s hands carefully, wary of being drugged, but they let him buy his drinks without saying anything more and never reached for his cups. His empty glasses littered the bar in front of him, and the Miralukan seemed to have kept pace with him in silence.

“Why do you need Chirrut?” Cassian asked as he fumbled for his last credit chip to pay for his next drink.

The Miralukan shook their head and put their hand on his wrist again, and pressed down, pinning his hand to the bar as they pulled their own credit chip out to pay. Cassian stared, trying to tamp down the swelling feeling in his chest at the sight of someone paying for his drinks and the press of a hand on his. There was a kinship there. Their hand was warm, and firm, with calluses along the palm that had clearly burst and scarred more than once.

He was a simple man. A simple man with more than just a few drinks swimming in his blood. A simple man with more than just a few drinks swimming in his blood and a strong, strong desire in his heart. And the Miralukan’s beads hung down just far enough to brush their cheeks and their cheeks were flushed and their lip had a smudge from where their ochre had been rubbed off on the rim of a glass and -

“Chirrut Îmwe is sought for recognition by the Luka Sene. I have been sent to deliver a message.”

Their voice wavered, flanging oddly on the vowels, and Cassian watched their fingers trace patterns in the air. They waved away their chits of change, and, pleased, the bartender left the two of them with their drinks.

“Why?”

“Business of the Luka Sene, Captain.”

“What sortta business?”

“The sort only delivered to the one in question,” the Miralukan drawled, finishing their drink too quickly and slamming the glass down, knuckles white. “And if you’re not going to tell me where he is posthaste, I really must insist, once more, that you kindly tell me where…Chirrut Îmwe…is.”

Cassian blinked. The alcohol must have caught him off-guard. The world around him was swaying unsteadily, he heard the rushing of blood in his ears. He turned to the Miraluka, only to see their mask uncomfortably close to his face. Even with the eye-mask in place, even with the dangerous circumstances surrounding this meeting, even with the knowledge, the suspicion that this had all been orchestrated to get his attention, he couldn’t help the way his breath caught in his throat. His eyes dipped to the smeared ochre. He wanted to…

“Captain. Please. Where is Chirrut Îmwe.”

His mouth opened. The words were on the tip of his tongue. He could taste them, taste the essence of the words and felt them start to drip off his tongue. He wanted to tell the Miraluka. He really, really wanted to tell the Miraluka. Wanted to tell them everything. But not where his friend was. Anything but that.

“Tell me where Chirrut Îmwe is, Captain.”

Everything melted away. Stars, it was only the two of them in the all-expanse of the universe. He was brightly burning up inside.

There was only the soft chiming of the beads and bells on their mask, the alcohol-sweet scent of their breath on the air. Just him and them. He wanted to tell them everything. Everything, absolutely everything. Their hands reached for his, gently pulling them away from the blaster at his hip, and his commlink – he wanted to stop them, wanted to shake their hands off, wanted to let them soothe his hurts with a soft touch, a slow brush of their thumb across the back of his knuckles. Gently, they folded their hands over his own and tugged him closer.

He stumbled out of his chair, stepping forward until he was standing in between their legs, leaning down over them, breath catching in his lungs, and they were looking up at him, head tilted in an appropriate gesture as if they had eyes. He leaned over them, and they gave him no ground, leaving him standing too close to them. There was nothing he wanted more than to tell the Miraluka everything. Everything.

 _Everything_.

“I thought I died on Scarif. I was ready to die. I thought I died.”

The Miraluka drew back, brows furrowing. This wasn’t what they wanted, he could read that clearly. But he couldn’t stop. The words had started and he was tipping all around inside and he couldn’t stop them now. Not even if he wanted to.

“Kay…everything happened so fast. All of them. _All of them_ they all were screaming and dying and we got the plans off – we completed the mission. And I – I thought, I thought – I thought…” he shook, trying to gather his breath. “I thought that I was done and that it was enough but it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough and I wasn’t enough and now and now and **now** ,” he hiccupped, panic constricting his throat. His breath couldn’t come fast enough for the words and he felt his grasp on Basic stumbling out of coherency. He grabbed for their arms, pulling them closer to him, dropping his head down, so close so close so _close_ to that ochre. “Now I’m a _hero_ , now I’m a _savior_ , now they talk of _Rogue One_ and I – and they don’t know. They don’t **know**.”

He staggered backwards and sat quickly back down, fumbling for his drink and drinking it entirely too fast. It burned all the way down. Cassian grabbed at the Miralukan’s nearby drink, and he was intent upon drinking the dregs of it too. His hands were shaking

“ _Tcht_ ,” the Miralukan muttered, reaching out to push Cassian’s last drink away from him, hoping he wouldn’t notice the remnants he left behind. “Let’s get you out of here, Captain.”

The Miralukan stood and pulled Cassian to his feet again. An objection bubbled up in the back of his throat, and then died. His knees turned to water as all the alcohol hit him all at once. He grunted when the Miraluka caught all of his weight and began escorting him out. The buzz and urge to tell the Miralukan everything faded away, and he was left with the far more familiar feeling of drunkenness upon him.

“Yo…you did the Force on me,” he slurred, trying to find his anger. But the world was swimming and he couldn’t find the words he wanted . “You tried to make me tell you where Chirrut was.”

“Yes.”

“You…not even sorry!” He said, jabbing an accusing finger into their…softer than expected chest. Her. Her chest.

“No. Come on, Captain. We need to get out of here.”

He stumbled and she held him steady. It did not even seem as if she had a problem handling his weight. He was a slender man, narrow in the shoulder and waist, and yeah, he was nowhere near as bulky as someone like Baze, but it still hurt some part of his pride to be so easily handled. He was _Cassian Kriffing Andor_ and he wasn’t going to be manhandled in such a way so easily.

 He struggled against her grasp, fighting for the dignity of walking on his own two feet. Unfortunately, all it got him was a quick dip as he snarled his feet on a pipe and hit a wall with his shoulder. They were outside the bar now, down some dark alley that smelled of sour saliva and vomit. This was not a pleasant part of town.

The Miralukan turned on him, crowded him up against the wall, pressing a hand against his shoulder and holding him there. His stomach clenched, and his heart skipped a painful beat. Cassian grunted, reaching up to push her away from him. She was too close, far to close with a mouth that looked too inviting in the dim light. His throat felt dry. But she was not moved. She stayed where she was, his hands pressed against her hips and far too much alcohol in his blood.

He could feel the bones of her hips jutting against his palm, and when she moved, he could feel the muscles shifting. Or at least he thought he did. His imagination wasn’t entirely under control.

“What do you want, Captain?” the Miralukan slurred, swaying unsteadily on her feet as her own drinks caught up with her. “I just need to know where Chirrut is. That is all. I have a message for him. I was sent. I want to do my job. Tell me what you want and you will get it.”

“He’s my friend,” Cassian said stubbornly. Other words floated through his mind, words that were probably better than that, ones that spoke to his loyalty to the Rebellion and divulging of secrets being tantamount to death.

He wanted to say that Chirrut had been injured and deserved his time to rest and that this Miralukan was getting no closer to Chirrut than the tip of Cassian’s blaster. He didn’t even reach for his blaster.  And those words did not come.

“He’s my friend and I don’t know you and I don’t want anything.”

The Miralukan seemed hurt, brows furrowing and mouth turning down.

“…I can be friendly…” she said, voice gone soft. She leaned closer. “I can be… _very_ friendly, Captain. We want th’same thing. I can be friendly. I just want to meet Chirrut. I have to deliver a message.”

Her mouth certainly looked agreeable, Cassian decided. He stared at how her lips moved as she talked, entranced by the native accent that dripped through her Basic, a odd vocal hum hovering at the back of her vowels. He’d been in worse situations with far uglier people.

But this was a Miraluka (stars above, a _Miraluka_ ) and he was drunk and they were looking for one of his friends.

This was an attractive Miraluka who was warm against his grip and who couldn’t see the way his eyes dragged so achingly slowly across their mouth. An attractive Miraluka who was strong enough to carry him, to hold him steady, whose hands gave him pause for they were the hands of a warrior, a fighter. An attractive Miraluka with smudged ochre on their bottom lip and breath that was sweet and whose body fit so snugly up against his, and he wanted.

“You are staring at me,” she said, her mouth quirking into a grin. “See something you like?”

“How do you _do_ that?” Cassian griped, a blush warming the back of his neck.

“Ol’ tricks. New ones, too. You people are s’very odd,” she slurred, pressing closer. “Lots to learn. Very lots…uh, a lot to learn,” she corrected herself, mouth twisting down as she tried to keep a hold on Basic.

Cassian watched all of this carefully, hands dropping off her hips. He sighed, shakily, trying to make sense of his evening, which had gone not at all correctly and he wasn’t certain if he was upset by that because she was _very_ attractive and _quite_ close. The contact he was supposed to be looking out for was still on his mind, the mission wasn’t even his, but he was still here to do it and she was…very close and quite attractive.

“Tricks? Like th’Force on me. To make me talk.”

She had the dignity to look somewhat abashed, drawing away from him, pulling her hand off his shoulder.

It was probably the only thing that saved her from the blaster bolt that snapped between them. With a gasp, she reached up, clasping both hands over the bridge of her nose. Cassian could smell burning flesh, and when the Miralukan ducked to the side, still clutching her face, he bolted. Legs steady, despite alcohol, adrenaline bursting through his blood, he ran for cover down the alley, shaking his blaster free from his holster and spinning only when he found something to duck behind.

Contact definitely hostile, he surmised, shaking his head to clear his vision. The Miralukan was gone when he peered down the alley, but the Imperials with blasters were definitely not. He had had better odds before, but he had definitely had worse as well. Much worse.

The sky wasn’t burning yet.

He would make it out of here, make it back to the Rebels, make his report, and then he would go elsewhere. He would fight until he ran out of chances.

And then he’d ask for his ashes to be thrown in the eyes of the Imperials.


	2. Second Chance (Not pleasant)

It was much later. Weeks? Months? Sometimes in space it was hard to tell. Cassian had been sent out over and over again, taking any possible mission to get him away from the main group of the Rebellion. Every time he saw the fleet, his stomach twisted, every time he thought about landing on Yavin he had to have his copilot (not Kay, Kay had been a crumpled mess) run all the pre-checks alone while he found a quiet corner to calm himself down in.

Scarif left scars, deep and aching, all over him.

He spent hushed nights curled up against Bodhi, both of them silent, save for breathless gasps as painful memories came rushing back in the dark, both of them clutching for the other’s hand as an anchoring point, Bodhi’s prosthetic discarded for the night. Jyn joined them some nights, curled into Bodhi’s side, her small hands pressed against the scar she knew lanced across Bodhi’s stomach. Chirrut and Baze would envelope whoever they came across in a tight hug and not let go until they were all crying.

Cassian rather ached for their presence. Chirrut and Baze, together, they made everything feel safe and secure for a moment. Just a moment.

He was alone on one of the worst planets in the Outer Rim, strolling through a hive of scum and villainy that put the even Huttese-controlled planets to shame. He was wearing light armor under his usual jacket, looking as nonchalant as possible as he stalked down the streets. A defector from the Rebellion had been causing some small amount of trouble out here and Cassian had taken it upon himself to handle it. Deadly force and all. His heart burned hot and cold at the thought of someone betraying what he had worked so hard to protect and serve.

They would suffer before the end. There were some things he had done, some things that kept him awake in the long nights, shuddering and shivering as his hands recalled the ghost of his blaster’s recoil. This was not one of those moments.

His head was clear, he was intent.

Cassian blinked the errant thoughts out of his mind. He was focused. He was not going to let himself be distracted by something niggling at the back of his thoughts.

Intel had placed the defector as being a regular at one of the local strip clubs…brothels…well, the intel officer had turned beet red and stammered “a house of ill repute” so Cassian was pretty certain he was walking into a brothel.

When he finally drew up next to the building the intel had pointed to, that suspicion was confirmed. Red light filtered through the dusty windows of the storefront and, standing in each window, a beautiful being. Male humans partnered with female human counterparts, grinding on each other with looks of abject ecstasy, female twi’lek writhing against each other, lekku entwined, a bothan spread-eagled, head thrown back, a zabrak doing something with their hands and the…Cassian looked away from the debauchery before he could be too enthralled by the gyrating bodies. It would do him no good to stand in the crowd out front and watch. His target was inside.

A few credit chips pressed into the palm of the doorman, and he was in, granted passage into the den of iniquity. Inside was just as red-lit as the windows had been. Smoke hung heavy in the air, heavy and opulent. Cassian couldn’t place the particular scent, but he knew the headrush of more than a few drugs rather well and when it started creeping up on him, he quickly endeavored to find a table he could sit at before he lost sight of why he was here.

There was music being played. Or at least, Cassian assumed it was music. All he could feel was a rib-shaking bass beat thumping in the air. A waitress came to tend to him, smiling beguilingly as she started to strip in front of him. Cassian allowed himself an answering smile, an appreciative look at what she was offering (oh what an offer), pressed another handful of credit chips into her hands for a round of drinks for himself, and waved her off with an excuse about just wanting to watch for now.

It wasn’t a lie, not really. He just needed his eyes to get acclimated to the smoke so he could find who he was looking for. They had to be around here somewhere.

There was a brief prickle at the back of his neck, a preternatural sense of someone watching him, but when Cassian flicked his eyes across the entirety of the bar, seeing if he could pinpoint who was staring at him. He didn’t notice anyone, but that did not necessarily mean that no one was looking at him. The haze was overwhelming, the growing warmth in his chest the result of a sultry blend of incense and undoubtedly some manner of drug. It was not unusual, far from it, honestly. He had not expected anything different, but…it did make thinking just a touch more difficult.

He still had a handle on what was happening, he was far from overwhelmed by it just yet. The brothel would not want its customers too drugged out of their minds or else they would not be able to pay for the services being offered to them. Unconscious customers were not spending customers.

But customers that were on that tender edge of high and sober, ones that walked the thin line of sensuality and synaesthesia, oh those customers were the ones that could be convinced to part with a goodly portion of their savings and livelihoods. If Cassian had had his own fortunes he could have easily seen the allure of drowning himself in the pleasures offered by this particular establishment.

He could still see the allure, but he was looking for a traitor and needed to pay attention. Very close attention. Even if his pants were…tight. Very tight. Uncomfortably tight. Nagging-ly reminding-ly tight. He needed to watch for the traitor.

Not pay attention to the stages where half naked performers worked on slowly becoming fully naked. Cassian bit his lip and slowly looked around the room. He had to pay attention to his surroundings, watch for the traitor, not get distracted by the humming of the music, or the sweet, drugged incense. 

 _Stars_ how long had it been? He had been fighting for so long…so very long and things had not been going well back at the main Rebel base for him. Wartime relationships rarely worked out well. He knew that. Didn’t make it any easier.

So he had to be on the lookout for the man he was hunting.

* * *

Well he was looking. Very carefully. Had been looking very carefully. He had been watching the way that Twi’lek’s hips had been grinding against the pole in front of them. He had been watching the way the human female pressed her lips against the neck of the male Twi’lek as his lekku wrapped around her shoulders. Still, throughout all the distraction, Cassian had kept his senses on high alert. He was watching, very carefully, so very carefully, ignoring what he could of the hard beating of his chest against his ribs and the warmth that pulsed lazily through him.

But it had only taken a moment of distraction, the barest thought that he had seen someone he thought he recognized – and not the person he was hunting, and he had turned back to see the barrel of a blaster pointed squarely at his chest.

Cassian blinked.

He had barely turned his head for a moment, allowing the sweet symphony of sensuality to whisk him away, and now he was staring down the barrel of a blaster, a traitor not more than three feet from him. His mind may have been fuzzy from the incense, and when he chanced a glance downward he saw that he had finished his first drink and was on a second…or third.

“Lennen, I did not think you so bold,” Cassian drawled, reaching for his drink, careful to keep both of his hands above the tabletop.

He did not want to give Lennen any excuse to shoot too soon. Cassian could think his way through this. The odds were bad against him. All of his plans relied on him getting the drop on Lennen, not the other way around. He could find a new plan on the fly, he just needed to stall for time. There was always a way out, always a way to think things through. If he could get Lennen talking, keep his attention on the banalities of his betrayal, Cassian could think through it.

“The times have changed, Cass.”

Cassian couldn’t help the way his lip curled at the kriffing _nickname_ that he had tried to squash from the very first time he had ever heard it. His name was _Cassian_ , his mother had named him _Cassian_ and he was only ever _Cassian_.

Lennen smirked, happy to see his small pettiness land a hit against Cassian’s usually steely demeanor. He waited, patiently, to see if Cassian would react any further.

Cassian tasted blood in his mouth.

He said nothing.

“See, Cass, the rebellion is losing. Losing and losing and losing. I’m not going to be dragged down with it. I don’t much take to following some Princess around, nipping at her heels like some sort of lovesick pup.”

Cassian’s hands clenched, and he heard the glass in his hand give an ominous pop. With a snarl, he shoved his glass away. The edges of his vision were starting to blur red as Lennen continued. Cassian tried to rein his temper in, trying to breathe through the rage that threatened his ability to remain calm. Lennen kept leering at Cassian, taking perverse pleasure in Cassian’s discomfort, which only fed back into Cassian’s rising temper.

“How could you _do this_ , Lennen?” he growled. “I didn’t think that was your style. Shoot a defenseless man in a brothel.”

Lennen grinned.

“Do you want to ‘settle this outside’, Cass? Wanna go one on one, no blasters, just fists? Winner takes the loser to the side of their choosing for interrogation?”

Cassian could practically taste the sarcasm dripping off Lennen’s tongue. He wasn’t going to let Cassian get up and have the chance at a fair fight. If Cassian had gotten the drop on Lennen, he wouldn’t have let Lennen get up to defend himself either. He was at the wrong end of the situation. Getting out of this would take more luck and more chances than he thought he had left in him.

But he wasn’t going to give up the few chances he had left.

“I’m fine with that. Been a while since I kicked your ass,” he said, nonchalance rolling off his tongue just _so_ , and Lennen fell magnificently for the bait.

 _I didn’t say goodbye, but I never wanted to, anyway_.

His finger twitched on the trigger, and for a brief, glorious second, Cassian saw Scarif burning anew. He sighed, relaxing, waiting for the flash of pain and emptiness that would be his death. It was acceptance, despite the hammering of his heart against his ribs.

He was going to die.

* * *

_there was heat, a flash of it across his face and chest, he could feel it building, it was so close now. if he breathed in, if he just breathed it all in, it would burn him from the inside out and he would be done, he would be done and it would all be over like it should have been already –_

* * *

The heat faded, just as it had done back on Scarif. Cassian sighed, disbelief flooding his system. He was still alive, still alive despite searing red blaster-light inches from his face. Cassian blinked the bright spots out of his eyes and then…

_I’m dead, I’m actually dead._

The blaster bolt hung midair, hissing, spitting energy madly in every direction, except towards Cassian. Incredulity did not even come close to expressing what it was that Cassian felt in that moment. The blaster bolt was unmoving, and he honestly, honestly did not know what to do. The world around him still moved, he could see movement out of his periphery, but the blaster bolt was not moving.

“ **Move** , Captain!”

The voice came from somewhere deep in his chest. He couldn’t place where it had come from, or what it was, but he knew the voice and he knew that he had to listen to it; he had to listen to it right now.

Cassian dove to the side, out of the booth, and the blaster bolt hit the wall behind where his head had been. He bolted to his feet as fast as he could, just in time to see Lennen’s blaster come up to track his movements. His scramble was far from dignified, but by the time Lennen had fired his next shot, Cassian had already darted out of the way and was heading towards the nearest cover.

The brothel finally took notice.

Screams sounded out as patrons and workers all realized what was happening. Cassian did not even reach for his gun, too concerned with trying to find cover, trying to get away from Lennen. Turning and shooting could just as easily end with him catching a blaster bolt in his chest from a concerned patron, or Lennen himself.

He saw a flash of blue patterned with gold, saw Lennen flinch, another blaster bolt flashing out, directly towards him. He heard the grunt of someone being hit, smelled the acrid tang of blaster bolts burning flesh, but it wasn’t him. He wasn’t hit. Not his time, yet. Not yet.

A hand wrapped around his upper arm, yanking him backwards. He stumbled, twisting to dislodge the hand on him, but their grip was unmoved.

“On your _feet_ , Captain, we are going.”

Cassian scrambled, trying to get the hand off of him, and managed to do so, just in time to see Lennen get his blaster up _again_ , point it at him _again,_ and _again_ time slowed as he saw Lennen’s finger squeeze the trigger, the bright flash of the blaster bolt and then – _again_ – someone blocked the shot, turning in front of him, their whole body jerking as they took the blaster bolt hit them squarely between the shoulderblades.

He cried out, more in shock than anything else as he looked up into the eye-mask of the Miraluka.

“ _MOVE_.”

Their lips were bared in a feral snarl, and violet blood spotted their teeth.

His scramble wasn’t dignified and he felt the crush of people around him all trying to get out of the brothel. Shouts and screams went up, growing in cacophony as others took the opportunity to settle some scores of their own. Cassian ran for the door, pressing through the crowd rushing for the door. He broke outside, bolting. He didn’t know where he was heading too, he just knew he needed to get away from Lennen and –

Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him along, hustling him out of the way, ducking him down an alley and pulling him into the dark shadows. He saw a flash of beads, and he relaxed only fractionally. He knew her. Not from the best circumstance, but he knew her. She probably wasn’t going to try and kill him.

His heart pounded in his chest and he could feel the heady influence of the drugs still in his system. So when he was pulled flush against her body, and his hands found the wall behind her, he couldn’t stop the startled groan that came out of his mouth. His reward was a huffing laugh from his erstwhile rescuer and her thigh came up to cage his leg and urge him closer to her.

For a moment, he just breathed, enjoying the cleaner air and the burning adrenaline in his blood.

He tried to pull away, but she had her arm around his waist and held him in place. He decided he was comfortable there up against her, anyway. She wasn’t knifing him and she didn’t have a blaster, or at least, his quick questing fingers journey around her belt didn’t find any. Only a hooked-on cylinder towards the back, hidden by the folds of her cloak stood out as anything beyond the typical fare for most rogues and scoundrels in the area.

“Hold the wandering hands, Captain, he’s looking for you. Take my cloak, put it on.”

It was the Miraluka he knew for sure, then, he recognized her voice, the way the vowels dripped and slid through their mouth. He dropped his forehead to her shoulder, not moving while he collected his thoughts. The Miralukan shrugged out of her cloak and threw it over his shoulders. He could see blood on the front of their undershirt and down their chin.

“You…you got shot,” he mumbled, his tongue feeling uncharacteristically thick in his mouth all at once. He knew it was just the drugs mingling with the adrenaline. It would wear off soon.

“ _Tcht_ , yes. I did. Twice. Not pleasant. Put the cloak on. Please.”

She pulled the cloak up over his shoulders, and he was surprised to feel the weight of it. It was heavy, as heavy as any of the other armor he had ever worn, and it stank of blaster fire. The hood came up and before he could react in any way, the Miraluka had torn off their mask, and pulled him forward, pressing her mouth against his with a hunger that surprised Cassian.

He froze, and she did not stop, pulling him closer, a hand sliding down his waist, cupping his ass. Her body rolled against his, a long, sensual line of pressure as she nipped at his bottom lip. Cassian groaned, melting into her, working his fingers into her beltloops, tugging her hips harder against his.

He had just spent hours staring at some of the most deliciously erotic bodies this side of the Outer Rim…and it had been a while.

He rolled his hips against hers, and was rewarded with a breathless whimper. Her hands stilled, he kissed her harder, and she fisted the front of his shirt in her hands. He thought he heard a seam, somewhere, groan and pop. His shirt felt overly tight, and then loosened, but her grip didn’t. Her mouth tasted metallic with blood, but he was fine with that.

Her hand on his hip dropped lower, sliding down his thigh, pulling him closer, digging her fingers into the thick muscle.

 _Stars_ , it felt so _good._

He moaned lowly into her mouth when her deft fingers pulled at the hem of his pants, her fingers brushing his skin. Cassian trembled, his own hands picking at her pants-hem in turn. She growled something throaty, something that vibrated the air and set all of his nerves on a delirious edge. He needed to hear that again. He _needed_ to hear that again, feel the rumble through his chest, the sudden way his gut clenched at it.

Cassian kissed her harder, not caring when he hit her teeth with his. He felt her fingers at his belt, and a hissed “ _yes_ ” was his response.

She smiled against his mouth, her tongue flicking across his lips for the barest second. He jerked his hips impatiently, rutting against her, urging her on with groaned endearments in his native language, something that even after all these years shaped the taste of his own Basic. Her smile turned into a chuffing laugh as he tangled her fingers in his in his haste to help her get his belt loosened.

Look, he really was concerned about the situation he was in, he was.

But he was also enjoying the way this Miraluka worked her lips across his. His belt was sagging open, and her hands were pressed to his waist, her thumbs following the line of his hipbones, pulling him closer to her. He grunted when her teeth found his lip again, pulling his attention back to her, away from the looming specter that was Lennen’s possible approach.

He slid his hands up her waist, under her shirt, over scars that pressed ridges against his palm, pulling her away from the wall, trying to get her closer to him, crushing her body against his. His hands crept higher, up her back, feeling up the thick bands of muscle that stretched alongside her spine, over the dips and valleys of someone’s body that was built for power and force. She hissed at him, a pained sound of shock, not a warning, when his hands pressed in between her shoulder-blades. His fingers felt sticky when he pulled away and she shuddered, sagging against him.

“ _Hurts_ , Captain, please,” she whimpered, arching away from his touch when he tried to soothe whatever it was.

For a brief moment, he felt the same tipping vastness and pressure he had when she had tried to compel him to tell where Chirrut was, but instead of the need to _tell_ , he felt a sympathetic pang between his own shoulder-blades, two hot circles of agony, seeping blood from welts that would darken into black bruises. He could feel the cracked ribs, the way moving or twisting hurt something fierce, the dull ache of every time he drew a breath.

But it passed, wiped away completely as soon as he realized that was _her_ pain.

“It hurts, I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to do that. You are you, and I am I.”

He kissed her again, gently pulling her towards him and turning until his back was pressed against the opposite wall of the alley and she was leaning against him, sighing impatiently. He tutted at her, letting her rest most of her weight against his body, in an entirely magnanimous gesture that was entirely without any other purpose. He braced her with one of his thighs, not at all using that as an excuse to feel the rest of her body against his. She was such a delicious weight when she allowed herself to be draped across his body.

She didn’t look up at him – but she did turn her head up to mimic what someone with eyes would have had to do, and looking at the maskless vestigial eye sockets, Cassian was struck with the sudden idea that he was looking at something he _definitely_ shouldn’t see. She may not have eyes, but there was _something_ that existed in that space that made him want to look away.

 _Her eyes are green shot through with orange_ , he thought in a vaguely dissociative way. There were no eyes there, but if she had had eyes…

She smiled at him, her teeth slicked with violet. There was smeared ochre in the shape of his mouth through tracks of blood across her lips. Nervously, he licked his own, and tasted blood there, too.

He felt something in his chest stir, like his heart had beat lopsidedly for a moment. Cassian stared at her mouth, trying to gather his thoughts because he was almost certain he should say something to her about what had happened, about what he felt, but everything seemed to fall flat. The drugged buzz was starting to fade, but the pleasant weight of her body against his didn’t. He was running hot under the collar, and he was finding it difficult to extricate himself, or even want her to leave.

She was there, and that was so very nice.

She dropped her head to his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck, purring something unintelligible under her breath. Again, his chest clenched at the sound, and he pulled her tighter to him, letting her rest where she was while he tried to gather his thoughts again.

Fucking an attractive being in an alley was far from the most salacious thing he had done on his own time, and messy kisses barely registered on that particular scale.

Stars, but just _thinking_ about the past fucking some attractive alien or another while the Miraluka was pressed against him, body to body, was enough to have his hands scrambling for purchase on her body all over again, trying to be mindful of the fact that she had taken two blaster shots to the back and shrugged it off like it wasn’t anything even if her bones were grating against themselves and her back was dappled with black bruises.

 He nipped her neck, and when she made a soft, surprised “ _ah_!” sound, he bit down on the soft, yielding juncture of her neck and shoulder, hard enough to get her to stiffen against him, hard enough that he thought maybe –just maybe – he had gone too far. Some liked it gentle.

He liked it with teeth and nails and tempered violence.

But the Miraluka’s gasp faded into another one of those chest-rattling growls and all the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Some stupid, self-destructive part of him loved it. Someone who had taken two fucking blaster bolts to the back, shrugged it off, and tasted like blood was sagging against him with hissed words that could be nothing other than a long, emphatic string of curses as her hands tore at his collar, lips curled back into a sneer. His traitorous _everything_ trilled victory at the reaction.

Stars, what a _reaction_. His job was all about sticking people just _so_ to make them squirm and dance for him, and this Miraluka was all soft curves and hard edges wherever he stuck.

Cassian moved his mouth further up her neck, biting down on the thick muscle behind her ear and holding pressure there until she was squirming against him, her hands at his throat, her fingers digging into his collarbones. That strangled a choked sound of pleasure out of his throat, and when he pulled on the flesh between his teeth, she mewled, honest to gods, she _mewled_ for him. Cassian snapped his hips against hers, grinding against her brutally, just to chase the pressure and friction.

When he pulled his mouth away from her neck, Cassian could see the line of bruises blooming on her skin. He kissed them harshly, nipping at the heated skin, trying to keep himself under some small amount of control. But her hands were pulling his shirt open and her mouth was skipping over his throat in return. Mildly, he thought that he should be concerned about someone so unfamiliar to him having her teeth on his throat.

She was doing an excellent job of shredding every thought, though. She dragged her mouth up over his chin and he groaned when she nipped at his bottom lip. Her hands worked up his shirt, her thumbs rubbing over his nipples, fingernails raking down his sides, and Cassian swore artfully, his head rolling back to rest against the wall behind him. The hood of the cloak puddled around his neck, and she was quick to pull it back up, pulling him closer by the hood, smashing her lips back against his.

….

And then her hand dropped to his blaster, and she pulled it free. Before Cassian could call out, flinch or otherwise move, she had pulled the trigger twice. Cassian jerked away, a curse on his lips as he prepared to feel pain or get involved in a fight, but when he turned, all he saw was Lennen standing there, mouth agape as his fingers came up to clutch at the hole the two perfectly-aimed blaster shots had carved through his sternum.

Lennen slumped, dead, and before Cassian could really register the shock her hand was turning his chin back towards her mouth and her lips were on his again. The blaster slid back into his holster and her fingers went back to the hem of his pants. The touch of her skin against his sent electricity straight through his gut.

She jerked his belt tight, and straightened his shirt.

“We need to go. I will take my cloak back. He is dead. Can you tell me where Chirrut Îmwe is?”

He blinked, trying to put everything together, but still shrugging out of the cloak as she asked. He shook his head. He was not going to tell her where Chirrut was, not even after all that, and especially not when he’d rather get back to _that_. She swept her cloak back over her shoulders and rubbed her mouth and chin with the back of her hand. Cassian mirrored the movement, more to break the need to feel her mouth on his again, than to get anything off his mouth. The back of his hand came back smeared with purple and orange.

The Miraluka bent down to grab her mask, tying it back in place with practiced grace. Cassian spared Lennen’s body one last, lingering look, somehow feeling cheated of…something.

Cheated of killing the traitor who had made him see red.

Cheated of hiking her legs around his hips and pinning her up against the wall.

Cheated of asking Lennen for what he had told, and to whom.

Cheated of seeing and hearing just what this Miralukan was capable of if he threw her to the bed in his ship and tore her clothes off.

Cheated of so many kriffing things. All the way throughout his life, he was cheated of so much and now his blood was running hot and he fucking _wanted_ her.

But the Miralukan was turned away from him, rolling her shoulders in their sockets and arching her back stiffly as she started walking away. Cassian watched, looking at the small discolorations on her cloak where the blaster bolts had hit her. She had bruises underneath the cloak, but she was alive, and she had taken two shots for him and done _something_ to the first shot to hold it in midair.

He let her leave. He didn’t want to let her leave but he needed to leave as well. Lennen was dead, and this was a dangerous place. She was already gone, vanished into the crowd, when he came out of the alley. Stepping over Lennen’s corpse, he tried to make it look less like he had just almost-fucked in an alley and more like he was a dangerous man who should not be fucked with. It didn’t matter if he felt the ghostly impression of her pain on his back and the shadows of her mouth on his neck.

It wasn’t until he was in the ‘fresher back at the Base, after bearing odd stares and half-hidden snickers from the others (and a singularly long glare from Jyn) that he got a good look at the deep  bruises up and across his throat and shoulder. He knew a bacta-patch would cover and heal it within a day or two.

He wore high collars for a week, and pressed his fingers against the bruises when they looked like they were fading too quickly.

 


	3. Third Chance (Right Behind You)

Cassian was pinned down. His team was pinned down. There was no escape, they were on some Imperial-overrun shithole planet, and it wasn’t supposed to be a fucking suicide mission, but they were blocks away from their escape route, and there were so many imperials in between them and their way out. It was impossible to know if there was even anyone back at their ship – or if the ship was even there still. A jammer had scrambled the frequencies and he couldn’t get any sort of notification of their peril off. He had to hope that there was a chance that the ship was still intact and that they could make it back.

He wasn’t worried. There was no time to be.

He had hit the point, with his companions, as to know exactly what to do in this situation. Take out as many men as possible, until none of them were left. His arm burned. He had taken a glancing blaster shot to his shoulder early on, and it stung every time he brought his blaster to bear. But he would bring it up, take aim, fire, and then relax, ducking down and out of the way, hoping that his shot had found purchase while another one of his team leaned out to take his place.

He blinked spots out of his vision. His entire life was a struggle, pain, fighting. But he was at peace with that. He was at peace with this moment, even. The sounds of battle drifted through the air, but he hardly heard them. His life began and ended at the tip of his blaster, and every shot he fired was the only thing that mattered until he fired again.

_Captain, fall back._

He shook his head.

One of his teammates grunted as a blaster hit their elbow, and Cassian pulled him down and behind, trying to defend his man to the bitter end. A blaster bolt zipped past his ear when he tried to look for whoever had shot his teammate, and he ducked back down. Furtively, he looked back over his shoulder, to the alley that had been scattered with impassable rubble and the remains of a half dozen destroyed Imperial droids.

The alley was cleared – a thin path wound back through it, providing plenty of cover, and a way to retreat and find a new path to their ship. Cassian blinked dust out of his eyes. He must have been mistaken earlier. Battle could do that. He could have sworn it had been blocked, but it clearly wasn’t, and when he whistled for the fall back, his team was quick to pick up their fallen or injured comrades and drag them behind. He provided covering fire as they all quickly made their hasty retreat.

 _Left_.

Cassian veered left as they came out of the alley, helping one of the injured along, one of their arms slung over his shoulder. Right would take them to their ship faster, but left would give them some additional time to regroup and keep the Imperials guessing as to which ship was theirs if they did not know already. The path in front of them was eerily clear as well, no stragglers or Imperial guards or droids in sight. He hustled his people down the road, trying to move as quickly as possible, because the Imperials would figure out where they were going, eventually, and the street was nowhere to be caught out. The road narrowed, taking a hard turn to the left. A blind corner like that was a great place to set up an execution-styled firing range of fleeing Rebels.

 _Wait_.

Cassian whistled for a stop, not liking the way that corner looked, and those that heard froze in place. One ran ahead, into the blind turn and got a blaster bolt to the temple for their troubles. Cassian hissed, his eyes going wide, watching the fighter crumple without another sound. No one moved excepting to duck into what meager cover was afforded by the street.

The pressure in the air changed abruptly, and the air filled with a high-pitched whine that he wasn’t entirely certain wasn’t just his ears ringing. A few loud crashes like plates of durasteel being shorn by a dulled edge sounded from the alley, but no one from that alley screamed or called out for backup. Cassian flinched, popping his ears with a quick jerk of his jaw. The whine lasted for a good few seconds, and he remained still throughout it, standing as if dumbstruck in the middle of the road, despite the hissed warnings of his teammates.

_Go. Quiet._

He made the signal to relax, and advanced slowly, weapon ready. No Imperials had rounded that corner to come kill them, and if they were at a stalemate, it was best to try and gain an advantage. Everyone else took his lead, weapons in hand, ready to fight, but again, as they rounded the corner, there was nothing waiting to attack them. Huge score marks marred the few Imperial bodies that littered the ground. But there was nothing else.

“Captain, what could have done this?” one of his people asked, their voice hushed.

Cassian did not want to say that it looked like lightsaber scarring. He had seen what Luke could do, watched as the Death Star exploded on holovid time and time and time again, had seen Luke practice with his lightsaber, watched Chirrut gently guide Luke through some of the advanced forms, watched Luke effortlessly cut through training dummies. He had seen firsthand what lightsabers could do to a body, seen the bodies of those less fortunate than he who had not survived Lord Vader’s assault, seen the wounds left behind on those few who had. It looked like that.

But it looked like someone with a more savage hand than Luke’s had swarmed these unfortunates. The stench of cauterized flesh was sweet and heavy in the air, a cloying smell he knew all too well. He saw smoke curling from the spinal column of an unfortunate storm trooper, and did not turn his gaze from it until he had passed the body. He couldn’t answer the question. They had to keep moving. There was not much time. No matter who it was who had intervened – and someone had _clearly_ intervened, quite strenuously – he needed to get his people to safety.

_Against the right wall. Advance._

Cassian motioned for everyone to hug the right side of the street, the furthest point away from where the Imperials had been. If they rushed the area again, this position would give everyone enough time to slink into the alleys and try and find another way to the ship. Sound logic. Good logic. Tight strategy, even if it was not the most innovative.

They all followed his lead, still ready for any fight that could sneak up on them. Cassian shook his head, trying to get rid of the weird fuzzy feeling that had started up again. It was like he was coming up from a drunken stupor, but when his vision went fuzzy and he felt something push his head down, he let the feeling take him over. Now was not the time for exhaustion to overwhelm him. They were close, they were closer than they had been and he needed to remain sharp.

The pressure grew and grew and grew, until it felt like someone was pushing down on the back of his head and -

He ducked.

A blaster bolt ripped the masonry from the building behind him into shreds. He felt the chips of stone tear into his neck and ears and before he could cry out, he heard the sharp report of one of his people’s blaster return fire. The pressure on the back of his head faded, and Cassian looked up and to his left. Another Imperial lay on the ground, three neatly grouped holes in his chest. Cassian blinked, trying to clear his vision. He didn’t…know what had happened there. He looked to his people and none of them had their weapons up high enough to have made those shots. All of them were staring between him and the dead body, and one tracked movement up on the roof above them.  

_Not the time. Go. Go. **Go**._

Cassian shook his head again, harder this time.

He felt odd. Really odd. He’d been in more than enough battles to be over the jitters and spooks, but that didn’t keep him from feeling like he was moments from exploding out of his skin anyway.

But he broke into a run, heart suddenly hammering against his ribs, adrenaline flooding his system with enough intensity to make his toes curl in his boots and all the pain of the day fade into the background. He ran, his operatives ran with him, and all around them, blaster fire started raining down again.

_Don’t stop, keep running. You are covered._

He did not even spare another look to the shooters. He saw blaster bolts coming towards him, ducked, and caught the sight of a blaster rifle ahead of him, on top of the next building. Three answering shots from the friendly rifle took out two more Imperials. Cassian couldn’t be certain, but he thought he saw three other rifles peek up over the lip of the building. Their fire was far more indiscriminate, a covering shield meant to force the Imperials to take cover as they all ran.

They passed the first building, and Cassian was too preoccupied with watching his footing to look up to make sure whoever was providing covering fire could keep up with them. But for his entire group, and their entire race down the long street, the cover-ers kept pace. How did not matter. What mattered was getting to their ship and getting the fuck out of there.

_Break left, now. Full sprint, get to your ship._

He yelled for the break, pointing to where the ship was waiting, and his crew _ran_ , swarming the street under the cover of their benefactor (Cassian couldn’t remember anyone on this planet who would be so willing to give them cover like this, couldn’t remember a single operative or contact who would do anything even remotely like this but he wasn’t going to argue, he wasn’t).He heard the heavy impact of feet behind him, but could spare no glance over his shoulder. He thought about it, but then the fuzzy pressure was back, pressing against the nape of his neck, urging him onwards. He obliged, out of breath and too intent on their escape to bother with any need to know.

 _Very good. Keep going. I am behind you_.

Cassian charged, his spirits lifted. He was safe. His team was safe. They were going to get to the ship and get _out_ of here. His team behind him, and a clear alley in front of him, and a guardian from the ether covering him, and there was nothing that could touch him. Tightly clustered shots burst out of the air over his back, clearing the path of any straggling Imperial agents.

The ship was ahead and it was just one final push to get there. It didn’t matter how much everything hurt in that moment, or how close he was to passing out, the door to the ship was opening and the relief team left in the ship was coming out, their own blasters at the ready, yelling for them all to get in, get in get in!

Cassian agreed that was the best course of action and ran for it. His team was behind him. Imperials swarmed from both sides, yelling their own curses and commands. His team paid them no attention, ducking into the ship as Cassian took up a defensive position on one of the sides of the ramps, bringing his blaster to bear on the smaller, but closer, of the Imperial groups. One of the team went down, an errant blaster bolt to the head snuffing them out within arm’s reach of safety.

_SNAP-HISSSSSSSMMMMMM_

Cassian flinched, whipping his head around to look at the source of the sound. Of all the sounds in battle that was the one most feared and hated. An ignition of a weapon wielded only by the truest terrors possessed by the Rebellion or the Imperials. There was no way Lord Vader was here – all of the intel had said otherwise, but, if he was, Cassian had to prepare for the undeniable death that would befall them all.

The world went quiet around the battle. Everyone drew breath all together, regardless of side in the conflict. Fear dragged at the hearts of all those in attendance. Cassian dared to look to the warrior who had entered the battlefield.

The Miralukan was there, standing with her back to him, the two discolored spots from where she had taken the blaster bolts back in that brothel for him still on her heavy cloak.

In her hand, a kriffing _lightsaber_.

It was a lightsaber. She _was_ holding a lightsaber, its hilt slightly curved around the edge of her palm. Cassian dimly recalled that he had felt the hilt of that very weapon against his hand back in that alley they had been in. He had touched one of the rarest weapons in the entire galaxy, he had had the chance to palm it, and take it from her or use it on her and he had not the slightest clue.

The lightsaber hummed loud enough to draw attention from everyone in the fight. Cassian saw weapons droop, mouths hang open and heard a breathless “Thank the Force” from somewhere in the ship behind him. The blade was a blue so bright it hurt to look at directly, and when she swept the blade up into a salute, the afterimage blurred around her.

 _On the ship, Captain_.

He knew the voice, now. The voice that had danced at the edge of his thoughts, urging him on, providing him with knowledge and clarity when he had needed it most, supporting him throughout the fight. It was her. It had been her. Here. Of all places in the universe it was her.

“Captain. Go.”

The shock of seeing the lightsaber was wearing off, and the Imperials were readying their weapons, trying to figure out the best way to go about attacking what could only be a literal living fossil in their midst. There were no Jedi – none living save Luke that the Imperials could know about – and yet, here was a woman standing, hooded and cloaked, with a lightsaber in hand.

The first one to shoot, at her back no less, did not get to see the simple flick of her wrist that spun her lightsaber down and behind her shoulder, effortlessly deflecting the bolt back with a crack louder than two pieces of durasteel clashing together. Cassian jerked his head away from the sound and stumbled up the ramp, away from the sudden cacophony that erupted as the entirety of the Imperial forces opened fire on the lone Miralukan.

Every deflection she made with her blade created a miniature clap of thunder loud enough to make the less seasoned of his team flinch and cover their ears. The movement of the blade hung in the air as a burning after-image, even as she swung the blade around her in perfectly tight arcs to deflect every blaster bolt away. It seemed practically effortless – her blade always in position before the blaster bolt could be, and Imperials falling with their own blaster bolts searing holes in their necks, their chests, their faces.

He couldn’t catch his breath fast enough to call out to her as the ramp started to close behind her. Touched by panic (there were so many of them and only one of her), he struggled out of the hands of his team, who were hurriedly seeing to him, trying to make sure their leader wasn’t hit by any of the crossfire. He rushed towards the closing door. If he could just get a hand on her and pull her to safety, all of them could get out of here and he could take her back to the base. They could escape the Imperials, and there wouldn’t be anyone left behind.

She held up a hand, and something unseen grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and flung him back into the ship. His head hit a container, his world went grey around the edges, and by the time he was fully in control of himself, and not being held down to a bed in the makeshift medical bay, they were in hyperspace, far far away from the Miraluka and any help he could have offered her.

He tried not to think about it.


	4. Fourth Chance (Walk Into a Bar)

Cassian walked into a bar.

There wasn’t a joke, except his slowly breaking faith in the Rebellion. Every time they asked more for him, he watched good women and men die. Far from home, far from the people who loved them. He watched the Rogue One crew drift apart as the Rebellion asked different things of them all. He rarely saw Chirrut and Baze anymore, the Guardians of the Whills drawn away to other tasks. Bodhi and Luke were inseparable, or as inseparable as they could be, with Luke always going out for some training or another, and the main base moving to Hoth.

He tried to avoid thinking about Jyn.

Every so often, they’d meet up again, and it would be torrid between them.

Stars, that woman got under his skin unlike anyone else ever had, and for a moment, he could let himself think that whatever was between the two of them could last beyond a handful of days, a handful of stolen moments and kisses.

But it never did. They were just too different.

He tried not to think about it.

He was very rarely successful.

Especially not when he was on a mandated leave of absence. Some of the higher ups had been worried that he was working too hard, that he was not giving himself enough time to relax. They had pressed a chit full to bursting with appropriated credits into his hands and told him that he could go anywhere, except any of the Rebel bases. He was meant to take a break. No working, no nothing. Find somewhere and just _be_.

Granted, it was easier to do that with the Imperials still reeling from the loss of the Death Star and the successive victories by the Rebels as time wore on. He was not the most wanted person in the galaxy any longer. In fact, on more star systems than not, he was a half-celebrated hero.

It was better than being hunted, that was for sure.

So he walked into a bar.

No one knew him here, or if they did, they kept their mouths shut about it. This was a planet notoriously unfriendly to Imperials, and with the current successes the Rebellion had been having against the Imperials, Cassian knew that he would find no trouble here. Or if he did, it’d be trouble of the more mundane sort, not trouble of the “fight for your life and freedom” sort.

It was relaxing. To him.

Bodhi had told him about the beach planet he had gone to, where he could just wander for miles down beaches with black sand, or pink sand, or white sand and there would be almost no one there. He had a whole place to himself, the sort of isolation that was comforting instead of anxiety-inducing. Cassian’s skin crawled at the idea.

The bar’s ceiling was oppressively low, and he felt the urge to slouch even though he was in no real danger of hitting his head on anything. He made his order at the bar, grabbed his drink, threw down an extra chit of credit to make sure that more drinks would be brought to him as the evening wore onwards. It hardly mattered what it was that he was drinking – it was alcohol, and there was a lot of it, and it was cheap, and it was plentiful. All the bases were covered.

There were a handful of deep recessed booths around the edge of the bar, and there was just enough noise in the bar at large to disguise just about anything happening in them. So he was careful to let his eyes adjust to the dim light and peer carefully into the darkness of the booths. He did not want to interrupt anything that he was not invited to.

In making his selection, he passed by a booth that was oozing smoke, and he flicked his eyes to the lone occupant. They were leaning back against the back wall, arms spread wide, long pipe in one hand. Their ragged jacket – no cloak, he noticed - gaped, exposing an undershirt that had a smattering of dried-black-blood stains down it. Their shaggy hair was longer, reaching all the way down to their shoulders, and their legs were crossed, with their right ankle resting on their left knee.

Cassian was struck by the…poetry of their pose. With their head tilted back, and a thin, continuous stream of smoke emanating from their mouth, the person looked good. Really good. Distractingly good.

“Gunna…make a gal nervous, starin’ like that, _Captain_ ,” the person slurred, turning their head onto their shoulder and looking at him through a very familiar beaded mask.

“How the _fuck_ …” he wondered around, already moving to join her in the booth. “We keep running into each other.”

“Mm, one may begin to believe it is not accidental, Captain.”

She grinned at him, smoke curling through her teeth.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

“Are you _following_ me??” he demanded, slamming his drink down on the table hard enough to get her to sit up and pay attention.

The patrons behind them within ear shot stilled, and idle hands slid towards blasters. If there was going to be a brawl, it was going to be handled very quickly.

“I…was here first, Captain. _You_ keep running into _me_ ,” she said slowly, smoke pouring from her mouth.

Well that logic certainly followed for some of their interactions, but not all. Cassian sat, staring at his drink, warring thoughts bubbling up inside of him. She kept circling him, it felt like. He would go somewhere, and she would be there. No rhyme, no reason. She was _there_. She saved his life. Twice. She had kissed him hard enough for him to wake up on lonely nights with the ghost of her touch still on his skin. Once. Only once.

He chanced a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She was relaxing back down, her body full of liquid grace and ease, her scarred fingers curled around her smoking pipe, head lolling back to expose a neck that was mottled with the imprint of someone else’s fingers.

Maybe she could be convinced for twice.

Cassian didn’t say anything for a long while, drinking and waiting for his next drinks to come, while she sat and smoked. Whatever she was smoking had a pleasant, herbal, spicy aroma to it, and whatever affects it had on her left her melting into the cushions of the booth. She sighed smoke and ash and with no eyes for him to gauge her by, Cassian found it increasingly more difficult to read her. He watched her, despite the feeling that she was doing the same to him in turn. But he couldn’t tell.

He grinned at her.

She grinned back.

* * *

His empty glasses kept getting taken away, so he had no idea how many drinks he had had. But he was pretty certain it was a lot. A lot of drinks. Because he was hammered drunk. And his arm was slung around the Miraluka’s shoulders. She was grinning still, her head resting on his arm, thin curls of smoke coming from the upturned corner of her mouth. He had another drink in his hand already, and words dripped from his mouth.

“Say it…again?”

“Cass…ian,” the Miralukan rumbled, her vowels slipping all over the place. “You want me to call you _Cassian_.”

Something else hovered around her words, filling his chest with a deep, satisfying sense of rightness. That was his name. **His** name.

“Yeah. Please.”

His voice came out with a note of pleading he did not intend for it to have. No one had said his name like that in ages, it felt like. She said his name and it felt like Fest, it felt like Rogue One, it felt like home and peace and belonging and everything he ever held dear in his heart. She said his name with a near-reverence that felt uncomfortable draped across the sounds of his name, but made him feel like he was something valuable, something worthy, something to be proud of, something loved. She said his name like he rarely ever heard it said, and it made him ache for something unattainable. He wanted to hear her say it again. He wanted everyone to say his name like she did. He wanted no one else to say his name like she did.

“Of course, Cassian,” she purred, before taking another long drag at her pipe.

He shuddered, a delightful zip of electricity racing up his spine. He reveled in the feeling, turning to smirk down at the Miraluka, who was happily taking another long drag of her pipe.

“You haven’t told me your name, you know.”

“I’m aware. It is intentional.”

“Why? I can’t keep calling you ‘iralukan.”

“You could, and ‘d prefer that. Names’re very personal things to m’people. We don’t give’em out easily. My parents an’ Jheza know it, as did my, ah…Ra…huh…um, officer in command.”

“Jesha?” he asked, pulling her closer and leaning his head atop hers. The extra contact felt nice.

“­ _Jheza_ , my beloved. The one I’ve chased across the stars, the one I left my entire life for. _My_ beloved.”

Cassian blinked, and the world tipped around him.

* * *

 

 _Gentle fingers pressed to the inside of my elbow._  
Curling edifices, it could be home if you let it.  
Soft lips on my neck.  
Whispered promises.  
Sheltered words.  
The first kiss in the middle of the hurricane - I had wanted to impress you.  
Love and love and **love**.  
So bright it’s burning, my love.  
You left – exiled – my love exiled – I will find you I will leave I will do anything to be with you again.  
My beloved.  
Jheza.

* * *

Cassian gasped, pulling himself away from her with a sharp hiss.

She remained unmoved, eyebrows slowly furrowing.

“I am sorry. ‘M usually better’n’at. ‘S hard for those like us. Our language connects word n’emotion and th’Force all together. I…have problems separatin’em when’m talkin’t’others.”

The afterimages of a place he had never been slowly bled out of his line of sight, and the feelings he had never felt faded as well. His stomach roiled, nausea coming up from somewhere deep in him. She did not say anything and was blessedly still, letting him settle back into his skin.

Cassian shook his head, and slung his arm back around her shoulders, pulling her close and pressing a quick kiss to her temple. It was something he hadn’t thought of doing, but it felt right and he really did not want to…not kiss her.

“So, you…uh…”

She exhaled a long line of smoke.

“Native tongue s’maybe a third spoken aloud. Most’v’hat woul’be considered atonal’n’emotionless. We use what y’call th’Force to fill in th’gaps. We’rra very Force-sensitive species, Cassian. Our names’s both a word anna feelin’, n’ very few people’re ever given’em. We jus’ go by titles, mostly. They’ve word-feelin’ t’them as well, which’s why I can differ-en-ti-ate between m’different leaders without ever needin’ t’really know their names, but it’s not as…personal.”

He nodded, and finished his drink. A new one was at his hand before he even set the empty glass down. Cassian grabbed that one and started in on it quickly, uncomfortable with the sudden turn in the conversation.

“It must be uncomfortable,” he settled for, after an extended silence. “T’have your language rely s’heavily on something everyone else can’t hear.”

She laughed.

“On-planet, it’s never even considered a _problem_. All of us c’n’do it. It’s only getting off-planet tha’ makes it…hard. But I can’t go back, so…I’ll get used tewit.”

“You can’t go back?”

His heart hurt at those words, a pang of longing and loss, and he didn’t care if it was her feeling or his, because he knew the feeling as keenly as she did. He set his drink down and turned to look at her. She stayed looking forward. Her mouth was set in a stern, thin line, and she was nearly vibrating with tenseness. Carefully, she set her pipe down on the table, her frown and furrowed brows deepening.  

“No,” she said, finally.

He felt the punch of sadness through his gut settle in, a tight feeling that made it harder to draw breath.

“Why?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“When we leave th’planet, we c’n never go back. We take what we can carry. Nothin’ else. Your family abandons you, no one’ll speak t’you, exceptin’ incredibly rare circumstances that few ever, ever get t’experience.”

She shook her head as if trying to clear a thought away.

“It’s nothin’. I need a drink, I’ll be back.”

Before Cassian could collect his words, she was gone, sliding out of the booth, heading towards the bar. Cassian watched her leave, and absentmindedly finished his drink. He knew he should stop drinking, that there were increasingly fewer options for his night that did not end somewhere he would be more comfortable avoiding. But there was a sadness in her that spoke to the sadness in him.

And she said his name in a way that reminded him of every time his name had been said _properly_ despite her vowels being all slippery and their languages being so very different.

He should go. He should find somewhere else – _someone_ else. He should spend his time in another bar, find any other person to talk to, get in a fight, go gamble, fuck, he should do _anything_ but get dragged into the Miralukan’s life. They’d already tangled and the more they wound around each other, the less certain he was he’d ever be free.

He was still there when she came back, two drinks in hand. She pressed one into his palm, and kept the other for herself. She did not come and sit as close as she had been to him before. She still sat with him though, her shoulders tense and her body sending off literally every nonverbal signal that she was upset. She nursed her drink for a long few minutes, curling up in the booth, one of her thighs pressed against her chest, and her chin resting on her knee.

“Miraluka?” Cassian offered.

She shook her head.

“I, hah, actually don’t like hearing y’call me that. Don’t feel right. I’d like t’give you my name sometime. I think.”

The drink vanished over a silent few moments, and she was quick to wave another over for herself. That one, she drank much faster, throwing it back without flinching.

Another drink came in short order, and that one vanished just as quickly. She drooped, melting back against the cushions of the booth, not moving for a long time. Cassian took the hint, and drank his own chosen alcohol in silence with her. She was too far from him for him to reach out to, but Cassian watched her carefully, trying to wind himself down and let himself just enjoy being drunk.

It was harder than he expected. Even with the alcohol making his world slide all around him and the room spin on an axis centered somewhere around the middle finger of his left hand, he still looked at the Miraluka and felt something tug on him.

“Come…here…please?” Cassian slurred, reaching a hand out towards the Miraluka.

She looked up at him, or at least, she turned to him, her head lolling unsteadily to one side. A shiver ran through her body, and her mouth parted slightly. Her lips were wet with alcohol. The ochre he had come to associate with her lower lip and some…less than comfortable nights alone in his bed was almost completely gone.

Stars, but he ached for her.

Slowly, carefully, she edged through the booth, back to his side, where he wrapped his arm back around her shoulders. She settled back into place like she had never left, but this time, her hand came to rest lightly on his thigh. Cassian tensed for a moment, shocked at the escalation of contact after what had already happened.

But she seemed at ease, relaxed and confident in her touch. The shock wore off as soon as her fingers started kneading into his thigh. There was a frission of electricity that ran down his spine, and he shivered in anticipation. Carefully, he shifted his leg closer to hers, pressing against her in a reciprocation of the movement. She shifted closer to him, turning her head towards his, her lips parted in a most inviting way.

Almost nervously, he licked his lips.

She mirrored the movement, something he would have expected from someone with eyes to see him, but he only halfway remembered she couldn’t…didn’t have eyes.

“What are you doing, Cassian?” she slurred.

“W-what?”

“Why are you doing the stuff you do? What for? I understand _this_ ,” she said with a chuckle as her hand slid higher on his thigh. “But why everything else?”

Cassian pursed his lips, and she swept in for a swift kiss. He mumbled a moan against her lips and he felt her smile. Hesitantly, he opened his mouth against hers, nipping her lower lip. The ochre tasted sweet against his tongue. Cassian pulled her closer, pushing himself halfway into her lap, chasing the feeling and sensation her lips on his offered him.

She allowed the kisses with a pleased sigh, and again, Cassian felt a shock race down his spine. There was an echo of the pleasure he felt from somewhere outside of him. The thought that the Miraluka could sense how he felt – if this was her feelings echoing back to him – _Stars_ , he was all at once completely unconcerned with anything else.

He kissed her down to the booth seat, trapping her beneath him. He felt that sense of pleasure hovering outside of his body double, and the answering surge of lust in his own body made a lot of thoughts fall out of coherency. Cassian just _wanted_.

He pulled back for a moment, wanting to look down at his partner, wanting nothing more than to see her coming apart at the seams. His reward was a half-askew eye mask, lips parted and smeared ochre down her chin. He found himself nodding at the sight for no better reason than it was very very very good to see that underneath him.

“You…didn’t answer the question, Cassian,” she said, her voice soft and breathless. “Why?”

Cassian groaned and leaned down over her to steal another half dozen messy kisses. They were easier than battling the feelings and thoughts in him. Easier than anything else and _fuck_ she tasted so good. He left a half dozen bruises in the shape of his mouth down one side of her neck, and felt the ghost of each of those marks on his own skin.

“Need to, I can’t – I can’t, stars, _Luka_.”

She arched against him as he lay his body atop hers. Her mouth tasted like smoke when he returned to kissing her, and he didn’t care in the slightest. Her tongue pressed against his and she pulled his hips against hers, digging her hands into his pockets.

“Try, Cassian,” she mumbled into his mouth.

“Someone has to,” he said into the tender skin of her neck.

“Why you?” she asked, her fingers finding purchase against his elbows, tugging him down against her so that she was pressed tight to him.

“’M good at it,” he said as his fingers worked the collar of her shirt open so he could press his teeth against her collarbone and leave more of his own marks on her skin.

“I’m good at a lot of things. That’s not why – _ah!_ \- I’m here though.”

“I just want to make the world a better place. I,” he took a minute to collect himself and ruck her shirt up so he could press a messy kiss to her stomach. “I wanted to make the Empire hurt as much as I did,” he slurred.

She purred at him, both of her hands coming up to knead the back of his neck and twine through his hair. He looked up at her, and her head was thrown back, her mouth open in an ecstatic grin. He slid his hands up either side of her ribs, slowly working his fingers up underneath her bra, and she huffed a laugh.

“Do you h-hurt less? Now, after all of this? Does it make it better?”

Anger burned his heart, hot and intense all at once. He bit her ribs hard enough to make her gasp his _name_. He tasted blood on his tongue and it was so far, so so far from enough to soothe whatever it was that was growling for blood in his chest.

“Does it?”she asked again, her words all at once harsh and demanding, pushing his head down against where he had bitten her, rolling her body against his face, forcing him to smear her blood across his mouth.

He could feel her pulse thundering under her skin, and if he closed his eyes he could imagine that he felt the Force under her skin rumbling with a power beyond his comprehension. Almost like she could sense his awareness of it in that moment, Cassian felt that power redouble, pushing back against his mouth, filling his entire body full to the brim with something that felt like static electricity. If his skin peeled off right then and all of everything exploded out of him, it’d feel right.

Her fingers were digging in now, and he felt the tipping vastness consume him. He felt all of his emotions rise up.

The anger and lust and wrath and fury, the hurt and sadness, all of it twisted in his gut, strangling him with a intense feeling so overwhelming that he didn’t know if he wanted to tear her throat out or fuck her or just – just -

“Does it feel _better_ , Cassian Andor?” she sneered.

“ _No_ ,” he snarled in return, lunging up to stare into her mask once again, teeth bared, mouth inches from hers. “No it _fucking_ doesn’t. It doesn’t feel better. It _never_ feels better.”

She laughed at him, hooked an arm behind his neck and pulled him back down against her mouth for a kiss that was more teeth than anything else. He tore at her lower lip until the sweet taste of her ochre was accented with the tang of her blood and her soft mewls.

The vastness in his chest grew ever bigger, expanding into shadows and light. He kissed her harder, clawing down her sides, drinking her wail of shock down with glee he could hardly temper, even if he wanted to. She didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, pressing her hands against his, her body shaking nearly nonstop as he continued.

He wanted to drown in this feeling forever.

Cassian cradled her neck in both hands, framing her face with his thumbs and kissing her again and again and again until he _felt_ the Force that reverberated through him start to sing. The dark feelings were still there, and all those desires that had him aching for something more substantial than whatever it was they were doing just then. Her body was muscled, and every time he pulled or pushed her body as he wanted it to move, he could feel the tight coils of tension through her. He knew this was only happening because she willed it to. If she wanted to stop him, she could.

She hiked a leg up over his narrow hips and rolled her hips against his, her lips pulled back into a snarl. Quicker than Cassian could think through, in a space narrower than he thought would allow such a thing, she had him flipped onto his back on the booth chair and was straddling him. He couldn’t have stopped his surprised moan if he had _wanted_ to. He stared up at her, trying to put his feelings into words that made sense. Because he had a lot of feelings.

Just. So many.

She pressed a hand flat against his chest, holding him in place. Cassian made a cursory effort to get her off of him.

That _growl_ came back, a deep-throated sound that made him want to do nothing more than tilt his head back and offer her his throat. Submission did not usually come this easily. But she dug her fingers in to his chest and rolled her hips against his and he would do anything to keep her right where she was.

The pressure sparked miniature pleasure supernovas up and down his spine and he was surprised by the whimper that spilled out of his mouth. Her mouth twisted into a savage grin and she rocked her hips again, hard enough to make him bite his lip and grab onto her waist with both hands to pull her _tighter_ against him.

“Ashla and Bogan, yes, _Cassian_!” she hissed from between her clenched teeth. Cassian grinned up at her, even though the expression felt more like a snarl on his face than anything else.

He had enough of her dictating the pace, and with his hands on her hips and one of his feet planted on the booth’s seat, and the other on the floor, Cassian set to a punishing pace, pulling her down against him, snapping his hips against hers hard enough to feel like he was going to have bruises on his hipbones. It hurt and it hurt so _good_ and it was impossible to separate the two sensations.

Everything in him was still tipping around. Between the alcohol, the lust, and whatever kriffing bullshit Force shit was happening, Cassian was lost. He looked up at her, with her bloodstained shirt, a blush high on her cheekbones, her neck and shoulders mottled with his bruises and bruises from someone else, her hair plastered to her neck where she had started working up a sweat, and most deliciously, her pretty white teeth bared in an ecstatic grin. Her pipe was back in her hand and a thin stream of smoke leaked from the corner of her mouth.

 _How much nicer would this be if we were naked_ , he let himself think idly, content to look up at the Miraluka and bathe in her glory. She smirked and he remembered the way her voice had echoed in his head.

Yeah, she could hear his thoughts.

“Didn’t peg’yuh for an exib-exhib-inist, _Cassian_.”

Pleasure ricocheted through his chest. That was his **name**. His name, and she said it the way no one else ever had. And she was sitting pretty on his lap.

Stars, he was the luckiest man in this fucking bar.

“Yea, you are. Not many can say they’ve had the pleasure, Captain.”

“Stop readin’ m’thoughts.”

“Stop thinking so loud, then,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

He laughed, hard and long, his hands not leaving her hips. The laughter felt good, like a slow release of tension that had dogged him for months. She laughed with him, her hands fanning out across his narrow chest, the Force rumbling in her touch, shaking the air in his lungs. Slowly, Cassian rolled his hips underneath hers, and watched as she shivered with pleasure, her head canting backwards, and the shadows darting like knives down her throat.

“You wanna…come back to my…ship?” he muttered, his tongue feeling uncharacteristically thick in his mouth.

He had been much more suave before, when he was trying to woo people into his bed. He’d also not been as blistered drunk when making the attempt. To his joy, she leaned back down to press a kiss to his mouth, his chin, his ear, his neck again. He purred at her, rubbing his cheek against hers when her position kept him from being able to kiss her back. She sighed into his neck, just before she opened her mouth and left a trail of messy hickies down the side of his neck, starting underneath his ear and going all the way down to his shoulder and collarbones.

Cassian groaned, his head falling back against the cushions of the booth’s seat. Both of his hands came up to cradle the back of her head and hold her close, pushing himself against her body, burning for contact that his clothes were definitely getting in the way of him getting. He clawed at the back of her shirt, trying unsuccessfully to tear it off of her, but she only laughed at him and pulled away.

“Yeah I do. Show me where it is, _Cassian_.”

He laughed, pulled her down close for another kiss and tried to remember how his legs worked so he could get this amazing woman into his kriffing bed.

This was a _great_ vacation.

 


	5. Fourth Chance (Stumble into a U-Wing)

He pinned her up against a wall, biting her lip and satisfying himself with the crush of his body on top of hers.

She dragged him into an alleyway, loosened his belt just far enough to slip her hand down his pants and make him see stars that burned brighter than anything else in the entire sky.

He returned the favor up against a pile of shipping crates, watching intently as she threw her head back and gasped his name. Without eyes to look into, Cassian was given the pleasure of watching all the minute details of desire flash across her face.

He was still stumbling drunk, and she had not yet relinquished her pipe, and was still blowing smoke rings intermittently as the mood struck her. He had taken one long drag off the pipe when she had offered it and now he could see gold and silver dancing at the edges of his vision. He had no idea how it felt for her, or what it did for her, but it tasted sweet on his tongue when he kissed her.

The anticipation was killing him.

His ship was not much further, and her hands were working into his pants now, tugging his shirt into messy disarray, pulling him along, pushing her hands against his hips, snarling her feet with his. When he stumbled, she moved with him, stabilizing him, laughing and pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“C’mon, this…thisways,” he slurred, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her along with him.

She laughed, spinning him around. The world tipped with them, and he had another moment where he was pretty certain everything else in the universe dropped away from him. It was just her arm around him and her body against his and the two of them were still too far away from his ship to really make any sort of headway on getting naked and getting pressed tight together.

Cassian tugged her along, not caring that they struggled and stumbled all the way to his u-wing. He got the bay door open and all but dragged her in behind him. The door shut, the hatch sealed and he wasted no time in tearing her shirt open and dragging his mouth down her neck and chest, picking her up and not-too-gently pushing her into one of the seats of the U-wing (he’d really have to clean it before taking another mission) and tearing at her pants-hem, desperate to get things moving now that they were in private.

She shifted her hips helpfully, arching just so, so that he could slide his hands under her hips and slide her pants down around her ankles. There wasn’t really anything he wanted more than to feel the electricity under her skin ricochet through his body. Her hands tangled in his hair, her fingers curling around his ears, even as she rolled her hips against his hands.

He kissed her hipbone, and he heard her laugh.

_All this way and that’s all?_

He growled and bit down hard against the bone under his mouth. The answering buck of her hips made him see stars and he had to blink tears out of his eyes. It hurt in the best way. He bit harder, digging his teeth in until he tasted blood again. He held her still underneath him, not caring how his knees complained about the cold durasteel floor. _His_ mark.

“You want it to scar?” she gasped, pulling him away from her bloodied hip by his hair.

Fractals of pleasure-pain provided only mere moments of clarity as Cassian stared up at her, jaw slack and mouth dripping blood.

Cassian hadn’t thought about it until just then, and he looked down at the bleeding imprint of his teeth in her skin. The world swam in his vision for a moment as he let himself be wrapped up in the idea that no matter where she went, no matter what she did or who she was with, a scar _he_ put there was on her skin, next to trophies of battles hard-won and injuries shrugged off.

“Yes,” he growled lowly. “ _Yes_.”

“Work for it then,” she said with a grin that twisted her lips into a snarl.

The challenge in her tone had him scrambling to strip her boots off and get her pants completely out of his way. She grabbed onto the back of his shirt, tugging it over his head. Cassian moved away from her for just long enough to get his shirt out of the way, and then he was back up against her, slanting his mouth across hers, getting halfway into her seat, unwilling to be anywhere excepting pressed tight to her.

She was wearing a mostly ruined tunic top and not much else, and he was completely shirtless, with pants that were just barely hanging onto his hips anymore, straddling her lap.

Carefully, she reached up to pull her mask off, dropping it to the side. Her hands came up to cradle either side of Cassian’s face, and for a moment, she just looked at him. Cassian didn’t know if looking into those vestigial eye sockets was something he should do, but he did it anyway, looking into those sockets like he would have looked into the eyes of any of the other people he had had in his bed.

Or up against the crew-seats of his u-wing.

He watched as her brows lifted, leaned into her hands as her thumbs brushed his cheeks. Cassian felt a warmth that had nothing to do with alcohol bloom in his chest. She leaned up and kissed him again, softly and sweetly and gently, her tongue sweeping into his mouth like she had done this a thousand times before. The familiarity stole his breath away, and he groaned his pleasure, offering his mouth to her for more of those kisses.

Her hands dropped to his throat and he felt them tighten for a moment. His head dropped back, away from the kiss, and she shivered again. She exhaled shakily, her hands trembling in place. Cassian pressed his neck against her hands, leaning into them, resting just enough of his weight on them for her to have to push back against his throat. He could see the ghost of some sort of indecision hovering in her face, and he couldn’t have any of that. Cassian closed his eyes, and arched into her hand, letting himself fall heavier against her hand, until his breath caught in his throat. He looked down at her, his eyes lidded and his tongue sticking out just barely.

He remained in place, stretched out above her with her hand on his throat. She couldn’t see, but Cassian could see the murky reflection in the windows behind the two of them. God, he looked wrecked already and she hadn’t even gotten his pants off.

“You’re so…Bogan, Cassian, you have no idea – I – you – _ahhh’stet_ ” she sighed, her teeth worrying her lip and the beginning of a blush starting on her neck.

She dug her nails into the side of his neck, and Cassian purred at her, his hips jerking unsteadily. One of her hands dropped down to stroke the front of his pants absentmindedly, giving him all the friction he could ever hope for. Cassian reached down to hold that hand in place so he could continue grinding against it, while his other hand cupped the one on his throat, holding it in place as well. He worked himself up like that, rutting against her hand like an animal in heat, reveling in the hand on his throat and the pinpricks of pain that her fingernails provided.

His movements were slow, deliberate, and even if she couldn’t see him in the slightest, he still put on a show, muscles flexing in tantalizing tandem, manipulating her hand on his cock with his own, asking in as polite of nonverbal ways as possible, for her to continue. Her fingers were deft and worked buttons free and his buckle looser and looser as he kept at it. Her hand at his throat tightened and pushed back against his weight, forcing his chin up, forcing him to stretch to accommodate the movement, forcing him to _let her_ continue.

Cassian shocked himself with a long, low moan when she leaned forward to bite his nipple, grinding her teeth across overheating flesh. Her answer was a chuckle, a swipe of her tongue across the reddened skin. His breath came harder now, in sharp short pants as he worked harder for the pleasure he could feel building.

A purple-tinged blush raced across her face, and Cassian felt a thunderous pressure build up in his chest that he knew was not solely his own. He stared down at her through lidded eyes, rolling his hips against her pinned hand, sending off shockwaves of electric ecstasy through his gut.

“ _Ah_ , Stars, **Cassian**!” she shouted, her back arching and Cassian was all at once punched through with pleasure bright and blinding.

Coming down from that orgasm left tingles dancing down his spine, and she was quick to move her hands to his waist, holding him up as she pressed a dozen messy kisses to his chest. He held onto her for stability he didn’t realize he needed until he realized she was lifting him up. Boneless and drunk and all at once unsteady, he reached for her shoulder, trying to stabilize himself, but she was not dissuaded, lifting him, and gently dropping both of them to the ground.

Her shirt came off, her bra followed after, and Cassian stared. Stared in awe and wonder at the patchwork of scars all over her muscled body, wondering how, and if he ever could, run his lips and tongue and teeth along all of the scars, all the lines of cut muscle in her flesh while she told him where those all _came_ from. Some were the puckered stars of blaster-fire, others were poorly healed cuts, and the one on the underside of her left wrist that reached all the way to her elbow, thickest of them all. He couldn’t tell what had caused that one. His eyes dipped to bite over her ribs from the bar, where the blood was dried, to the bloodied mess of her hip, where his teeth had left their impression. A new scar to add to the rest of them.

“ _Stars_ ,” he whispered reaching up to run his thumb through the blood. “All these scars and one more.”

She purred at him, pulling on his belt, leaning down over him. He shifted quickly to kick his boots off and get his pants out of the fucking way.

Out of the way of fucking.

 _Who cares_.

“The most delectable of them, I think, _Cassian_.”

He dragged his fingers through the ultraviolet-hued blood once again, leaving streaks in the patterning of his own fingerprints.

She pressed her body to his, sliding easily atop his only just barely too-sensitive cock, and he felt the thrumming of the Force again, building pressure in his chest and gut and behind his eyes. He looked up at her and her grin was feral.

“You are quite a hand with that Force, there, ‘Luka,” he said.

Her grin grew wider, and she threw her head back with a breathless cry. Cassian’s world went white around the edges as a second orgasm lit every nerve ending in him on fire. He came back to his senses, gasping, covered in sweat as an entirely too self-satisfied Miraluka stared down at him. Her chest was still tinged lavender, and her breath came in sharp pants.

“Hadn’t noticed at’all, _Cassian_. Don’t have any idea what you could be referring to,” she gasped out, shivering delightfully atop him.

He had to take a moment to catch his breath before he could find the words he so desperately wanted to say, and before he could manage any of them, she was already biting his neck and leaving another wave of bruises in her wake. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, he felt like everything was coming to a head too quickly because all over again (and he could _feel_ her smiling against his skin) the pressure was building. He heard her whine and tense under his hands. He got only a moment of warning, of feeling that pressure grow to the point where he felt like his body was going to crack open just to relieve it but -

“ ** _STARS, ‘LUKA_**!!” he roared, grabbing onto her hips and pulling her tight to him, thrusting as deeply into her as he could when his world started going white again.

She chuckled as he slowly came back to himself, gasping for air and clutching weakly to her arms. He pulled on her arms, and she slowly lowered herself down.

This was the best sort of torture, he decided as she stretched out atop him, trembling. Because he could feel the Force in her and in him start to build again. He wasn’t even certain he had anything left in him and while it didn’t seem to matter to her, he was almost apprehensive about the idea, as much as it turned him on to realize he maybe didn’t as much control over this as he would like.

“Not _, hah_ , gunna stop?”  Cassian panted, pushing hair up off his forehead.

“Not for a while. Keep up, Captain, yea?” she said with a self-satisfied grin.

He laughed, letting his head fall back against the floor as her hips slowly started moving against his.

This was an _excellent_ vacation.

* * *

He only was half-awake hours later when he heard the Miralukan get up and start going through the pile of their clothing. He propped himself up on a single elbow, watching her at her work, trying to figure out how she knew which of the clothing was hers and which was his.

“Gunna-“

“Make a gal nervous, staring like this?” he drawled, laughing when she turned to stick her tongue out at him. “That’s the idea, isn’t it? Make you nervous, get you in my ship, and so on.”

“ ‘And so on’, really now?”

Cassian shrugged.

“Hey it worked once already, can’t blame me for trying again.”

She arched an eyebrow at him, and Cassian had the feeling that if she had actually had eyes, she would be rolling them at him. He curled a finger at her, beckoning her to come closer.

“You realize I don’t have eyes, right, Cassian?”

He blinked, looking down at his hand, groggily trying to understand what it was that he was doing wrong. She had responded to just about everything else he had done or said or moved.

“I’m teasing, stop thinking so hard. I can see just fine,” she said as she put…his shirt on.

“My shirt, though.”

She looked down, and grinned.

“Mmmm, I think it looks better on me, honestly, wouldn’t you say?”

He stared at her for a long minute, his heart all at once in his throat. He’d seen plenty of people in his clothes before, but there was always something enchanting about it. With a wry smile, she lifted the hem of his shirt to tease him with the brief sight of the raw and still-bloodied imprint of his teeth on her hip.

Cassian’s breath caught in his throat and even as he made an effort to get himself up to get back to her, she was wiggling into her trousers and lacing her boots up. He settled back down in the pile of thin blankets and threadbare pillows they had gathered together from elsewhere in the U-wing, content to watch her for a little while.

Their night had been pleasant, a good way to pass time, and the ache from more than a dozen bruises and a few long scratches down his shoulder was a good memory of a night that honestly was hazy through most of it. He wouldn’t mind another round, he wouldn’t mind another few rounds, he wouldn’t mind a lot more rounds.

Starting now, actually.

He let his hands wander across his hips, pressing his fingers against the bruises she had left in her wake the night before, letting the soft ache build up and tantalize him. He did not particularly care about where his shoulder was stiff, or where his back ached from sleeping on the floor instead of in his spartan bunk.

To be fair, the both of them would not have fit in the bunk. She was a little too lanky and it was too far away, anyway.

She huffed at him, shrugging her shoulder – he vaguely remembered holding her face down and cranking her arm behind her back as he fucked her, that might have been a little harsh in retrospect – and then with a long sigh, she turned to him, her fingers framing a decent-sized rip right next to her pant’s buttons.

“I’m taking your belt, Cassian,” she grumbled, reaching down to pull his belt out of the pile. His belt was just the slightest bit too bulky for her loops, and the buckle looked a little odd against her stomach, but Cassian really did not care.

His shirt, his belt, her pants, her boots, and a dozen dozen bruises all over her in the shape of his mouth and fingers, and she was going to leave, but stars, he would think of this moment often. Cause…damn.

She grinned at him, meeting his eyes for a brief moment. Again, he stared into what would’ve been her eyes, and the world around him shook.

She tied her mask back in place and gave a small wave.

“Calm skies, Cassian. Stay safe. Know peace.”

She bobbed her head briefly, and reached for the door lock.

“W-wait!” Cassian called out, getting quickly to his feet and clutching one of the blankets to cover himself as the door opened.

She paused, looking back at him with an eyebrow lifted.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t ask about Chirrut.”

She grinned, and he tried to read anything that could be happiness in that expression. Something in the air sizzled out, leaving an aching void in its place.

“No. I shouldn’t see him. I lost what I was to give him. I failed. Safe skies, Captain.”

He frowned, reaching for the override and slamming the door shut in front of her. An unexpected feeling of anger had welled up in his chest and he held his hand on the override. She snapped her attention back to him hard enough for Cassian to _feel_ the surging intention in her. He tried not to flinch away from the intensity. She was _upset._

“What is that about, ‘Luka?” he asked, his hand not leaving the override.

Her lip curled and she turned on him, hands clenched tight at her sides. The muscles he had spent hours admiring tensed visibly, preparing for a fight.

“Let. Me. Out.”

“Tell me what changed, ‘Luka. Why don’t you want to see Chirrut anymore? That’s all you wanted-”

“Things changed, Captain, let me _out_.”

“No, tell me _why_. _”_

In a shocking display of fury, she spun and punched the wall, her fist denting the durasteel far more than he would have expected possible. Cassian took a step back, regretting his nakedness all at once – getting in a fistfight while naked was rarely a good idea.

But he didn’t take his hand off the override. He wanted answers. He deserved answers, he didn’t want her to leave, and more than anything else, he wanted to know what had changed, because all at once she was leaving, and it wasn’t _like_ before, where they had parted ways under fire, where there had been no time for a goodbye because something had always happened.

But this wasn’t one of those times and she was leaving without explaining. He deserved and explanation.

Hissing through her teeth she turned on him again, shoulders tense and eyebrows drawn down.

“It has nothing to do with you, or this, Captain. I lost what I was meant to give and I cannot get it back. It is gone from me, she is gone from me, it’s all – it’s none of your problems, none of your business and I –“, she cut herself off abruptly, jerking her head away from him and turning back to the button for the door.

Her fingers slid into the divot for the button and she pushed it fruitlessly, pushing it over and over and over again to try and get the door to ignore the override. It was useless, she knew it, but she kept at it until Cassian locked the override in place and walked over to her.

He could feel the thickness of the air around her as he came closer, like the air itself was reverberating and trying to push him away. Cassian pushed through anyway, wrapping his arm around her waist and resting his forehead against her shoulder. She stiffened, pushing on his arms, halfheartedly, before stopping and leaning her head against the cool durasteel panel.

“Cassian, please. Let me out.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

He tightened his grip on her holding her close, and for just a moment, he felt the tipping vastness rise up in him that had had come to associate with the Force. He felt like he could lose himself in it for days, if he only had the chance. He didn’t want her to leave. He truly, honestly, did not want her to go. She was soothing, a known value that existed outside the Rebellion, someone who could match him, who grinned with the dust of war still pressed into her skin.

Cassian had never been one to be struck by wanderlust, by any sort of restless need to go and explore and travel. Since he could remember, he’d only ever wanted to find a home, and settle there for the rest of his days, with no concern to ever leave ever again. He wanted the stars and freedom and he wanted someone to share it with. Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut and Jyn, even, were part of his family. They had all been through so much and he wanted nothing more than to protect them.

But the Miralukan…

He wanted her there too.

She took a deep breath, her hands cradling where his held her tight. With a long sigh, she leaned her head against his.

“I can’t, Cassian. And you don’t want me to stay. Not really. You don’t know me. I can’t stay…Please, Cassian.”

He held her tighter. A savage wave of refusal welled up in him. Every time they parted, it was less and less likely they’d ever see each other again. The chances would wear thin, and there would be a day where he walked away from her and he would never see her again.

“Then tell me.”

She crumpled, turning in his arms and gently reaching up to cradle his face in her hands. He looked at her mask, and saw missing beads, strands torn, fabric faded and frayed – so very different from when he had first met her. There was the faded scar across her nose from that blaster bolt that had heralded her first abrupt departure. He had seen the length and breadth of her body in the night but it was not the same as looking at her like this.

There were lines carved through her skin, of worry and hesitation and fear. There was exhaustion writ deep into her bones and Cassian hated that he had to look at her like a target instead of a friend to see it. He hated that it was easy to look for her weaknesses, look at how all he would have to do would be to offer something just _so_ and he knew she would stay. He hated that he could do that to people he cared for.

She leaned her forehead against his, and exhaled softly.

“Tell me where Chirrut Îmwe is,” she said.  
_Duty, obligation, last chance, so lonely, so lonely, please,_ murmured the Force and Cassian nearly took a step away from her. She held him close, letting the feelings and emotions and connections behind that question as she had asked him those months ago wash over him. There was – there had been so much under the surface that he had missed out on and it was overwhelming.

“Captain.”  
_Leader, you know the struggle, your men not mine, please, I understand I know what it is like, I know the hesitation, I would do the same, trust me please, we are the same ._

“Calm skies, Cassian. Stay safe. Know peace.”  
_Goodbye._

He felt the way the Force moved through her for a moment, the undeniable shift in the way everything _was_ into how she wanted it. The override disengaged, the door opened, and with one last kiss pressed to his forehead, she was gone before he could even begin to ask her what that all meant.

He blinked a tear out of his eye, and shut the door behind her. He leaned against the wall for a long while after, trying to think through why it was that he felt so…empty.

Cassian dressed in his spare clothes and tried not to think about it any more than he had to.


	6. Fifth Chance (What Could Be)

He hadn’t seen her in months. So much was going on, so much was at stake – a new Death Star, a breathless race to defend and protect and get everything in order fast enough to keep the worst from coming to pass – and all of it was coming to a head at once. Stress had become a constant companion, and Cassian had been stretched thin. So thin. He had not slept in days, he had worn himself down to the bone trying to get everything in order, trying to hunt down any leads that could protect the Rebellion and he had fucked up.

He had been captured, knocked on the back of the head and dragged away from his ship. He had been out of contact for so long that no one had thought to come for him, and with everything else that was going on, Cassian didn’t blame them.

He was tired.

Stars above, he was exhausted.

He woke up in a transport, hands bound in front of him, jacket stripped away, shoes gone, belt gone, a headache rattling through his skull. He was in a cell in the back of the transport, with heavy bars that set into the floor and a control pad too far out of his reach for it to be anywhere near useful to him. He cursed under his breath, dropping his head down between his knees and trying to count himself into calm.

He was alive.

That was a start.

He was alive and being taken somewhere, which meant he was useful to someone. Who that someone could be, he couldn’t think of. Imperials would want him dead, or would have already pumped him full of drugs to start interrogations. Anyone else wouldn’t really know who he was unless he had done a bad business deal with someone and they were coming back for him, but that just fed back into – why was he still _alive_?

Cassian made himself breathe steadily, trying to think instead of start acting. If they thought he was still unconscious and left him alone for a while longer, he could try and think his way through the predicament.

He checked, as quietly as he could, for his usual “get-out-of-here-quick” equipment, but found none of it. He had been stripped entirely clean of anything he could have used. Even the spare-spare set of lockpicks he had taped along the dip of his ribs were gone. It wasn’t particularly common for someone to find _everything_ on him, but these people had.

Cassian looked at the locks around his wrist and was disheartened to see that they were high quality. Exceptionally high quality. Some of the most secure restraints available.

“Stars and dust,” he swore under his breath, clenching both of his hands and beating them once on his knees.

“Oh, you are awake then, captive?” purred a voice from the front of the ship.

Cassian started, looking through the bars of his cage to where the voice was. No one was sitting in view.

“Well, you’ll be an interesting bargaining chip. Oh, and don’t worry about trying to contact any of your friends. That nifty little comlink you had broke real nice. Settle in, the ride’s a long one.”

He heard a laugh and then an echoing laugh from someone else.

He shifted in his cage, unsurprised to find it too small for him to stretch out completely in, and irritated that he had been captured. He would get out of this.

He always got out of it.

* * *

Cassian had managed to fall asleep, but the shaking of the ship got his attention, and he jerked awake. Whoever was piloting wasn’t gentle on the landing and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making some snarky remark. He didn’t know who these people were and popping off at the wrong moment could make everything that much harder.

So he waited, trying to remain relaxed and loose, despite the building ache across his shoulders from laying halfway cramped for however long he had been on the ship. He heard footsteps approaching and turned to try and get a first look at his captor.

His head turned towards the wall instead.

Blinking, he struggled, trying to move his head, but it was like someone was holding him in place against his will. He stilled, shaking as he realized that whoever had captured him had at least one force-user.

“Can’t have you spoiling my fun, pet. Why don’t you go to sleep for a bit while we get you situated. You’ll make a great toy until we figure out who we’re selling you too.”

Cassian tried to move, tried to fight back the sudden wave of exhaustion that wrapped around his neck, dragging him down into unconsciousness. His body went limp, and he couldn’t stop it. He fought as long as he could, trying everything in his arsenal to stay awake. But he couldn’t.

Darkness dragged him under to the sound of manic laughter.

* * *

He woke up all at once, sitting up in a panic. Confusion reigned those first few moments as he tried to figure out just where he was and what was going on. The world around him was rusted and done up in shades of grey and brown, and smelled of stale air and sweat. There was an uproar from elsewhere, a dull cacophony that drew his attention more than anything else.

He was sitting on a thin grey cot thrown in the corner of a cell with thick bars and only a small screen in the upper corner, far out of his reach and with no visible way to get it to work.

He’d been in worse places.

Cassian stood slowly, feeling out for any bruises or broken bones from rough handling that he could have incurred in the transport from the ship to here. There was nothing that stood out.

He took the pace-length of the cell, and was unsurprised to see that it was…small. Five paces by ten paces at the very most. Cramped, but not the smallest space he’s ever been forced into. Cassian walked to the bars of his cell. He didn’t touch them, fearing for them being electrocuted or otherwise incapacitated or alerting his captors as to his awareness. The hallway outside was empty, but wide. He couldn’t see any other cells on the opposite wall. Without peeking through the cell itself, he couldn’t tell if there were cells flanking his.

He couldn’t hear anyone else nearby, and he slowly walked back to his cot and sat down. Cassian had been interrogated before, and was familiar with a multitude of techniques. He’d used more than a few of them in the past. If they wanted to make him wait and get him nervous, he was more than content to wait them out.

He waited for a long while, but no one came. He didn’t even see anyone walk down the hallway.

In the distance, he heard the roar of a crowd get louder and louder, reaching a fever pitch before guttering out. Whatever it was that had happened out there was clearly done. Cassian pressed his back against the corner, posting up and waiting to see what happened next. There was a clatter, a long string of curses spilling from many mouths.

He heard the sound of boots dragging along the ground, the labored breathing of someone who had taken a beating, and past his cell came a retinue of guards, the largest of which were carrying…dragging an unconscious –

“’Luka,” he breathed, leaving his cot and racing to the cell door.

It had only been a moment, he couldn’t even be certain that who he saw was her.

The person they had been dragging was wearing a shirt stained with so much blood that it was impossible to know if it had ever been the charcoal-grey of his Miraluka. Their pants were in hardly any better shape, showing ragged holes and hasty patches. There were fresh wounds all over, with healing oil-dark bruises beneath the new cuts. They were hanging limply by the arms, hoisted along by two huge guards. Their eyes had been covered with a rag.

But the blood had looked purple as it dripped off their skin. He tried to see if he could discern the color of the blood on the floor, but he couldn’t. The guards walked back unaccompanied, and Cassian shrank back from the cell door. But none of them seemed to be paying him any mind. They didn’t even spare him a backwards glance.

Cassian thought about all of this as he walked back to his cot and sat down.

No one came for him.

* * *

He woke up hours later to the sounds of breathless whimpers from the direction the other prisoner had been dragged in. He thought, at first, that that person was being tortured, that this was some sort of other psychological torture to try and get at him.

But then the whimpers devolved into a moan, breathless and reedy, and Cassian blushed.

A second voice joined the first, laughing when the first voice broke out in a sharp cry of pain. Cassian turned over in his cot, facing the wall, trying to clutch his threadbare shirt around his neck, and not listen.

The moans, however, did not stop.

Unwillingly, he felt the sparks of arousal starting in his gut, coiling tight all at once, pulling pleasure out of him with startling ease.

He blinked tears out of his eyes, emotions rising up in his chest from unknown places, strangling him with intensity. His hands found the buttons of his pants and he just barely managed to keep himself from undoing them. He had a burning need in him, and it wasn’t leaving. Like any of the worst drugs in the galaxy, it gnawed at him, pulling him apart, and he craved it without wanting it. This wasn’t _him_. But _Stars and Dust_ it felt so good. Better than anything else he had ever felt. It was sweet, bitter, consuming want that pulled him apart and filled him up with lust.

His cock was rock hard when he pulled his hand over it, and pleasure, keen, bright, and blinding, slashed through him. The layers of friction between his palm and his cock only made it _better_. He did not need to strip down. No, even if it did feel so good like this, he could have more. He wanted more. He wanted _her_ in his lap again, the Force rattling through his bones, her mouth on his. He wanted, craved, ached for her.

Brokenly, he groaned " _'Luka_ ," under his breath, wrapped up in a fantasy he never wanted to be free of.

He heard, disjointedly, the shocked gasping moan in response.

The _need_ in him redoubled, a spear of lust so strong and overwhelming that he couldn’t help the sharp cry of his own. He gasped for air that seemed like it wasn’t enough, feverish all at once for _more_. His hand jerked unsteadily over his cock, chasing an orgasmic high that took over everything in him. He needed – he just ­ _needed_. Images sprang unbidden into his mind - him with his hand between her shoulder-blades, holding her up against the wall, pants jerked down just barely out of the way, rutting into her, plunging deep into her - him with his hands bound over his head, her on her knees, her mouth on his cock, she'd been there for _hours_ and he was burning up - in his bunk, back at the base, the lights dimmed, and soft music playing, her naked body rolling slowly against his, sweet and slow and sensual - and on and on and on until he was dizzy with lust so overwhelming and overpowering that he could do nothing but surrender to it.

The moans from the cell next to his grew in ecstasy, and Cassian felt thunderous _Force_ building in him again. It was madness. He drowned in it, gritting his teeth against the foreign feeling, trying his damndest to stay quiet, biting his knuckles until he tasted blood. It was just too much.

Cassian cried out against his knuckles, and tried to get his hand stop palming his cock but he _couldn’t._ The moans from next door cut out abruptly replaced with a high scream. Cassian grunted, pain ricocheting through his chest. The pleasure bled out into nothingness. The compulsion faded. He lay there, on his side in a cot in a cell that he had been put in without any understanding as to why, with blood dripping down his knuckles.

Cassian gasped, finally free of whatever had came upon him, and he hastily shoved his cock away, trying to catch his breath because…that had been weird. Erotic, sure. Frustrating, also that, because he hadn’t cum. Confusing among everything else.

He tried to catch his breath, struggling against everything that had risen up in his chest and shivered. It was cold, and he had no blanket.

The cell where the sounds had been coming from opened with a clang, and then slammed shut. He heard footsteps rapidly closing in on his cell and then his own cell door rattled.

“ _You_ ,” snapped a voice.

Cassian was thrown out of his bed, dragged backwards towards the door. He scrambled for purchase on his cot, but whatever was dragging him was impossible to get away from.

He was dragged out the cell door, his head cranked around to keep him from seeing whatever it was that was pulling him along. The pulling became a push, and without being able to fully control his limbs, his face scraped along the floor for a good distance before he was picked up by the collar and shoved up against the bars of the next cell down.

Blinking spots out of his eyes, and trying to focus his vision, he heard a pained cry from the cell.

A rambling string of words rushed through the air around him, and Cassian was hopelessly lost to the flow of the conversation. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus, couldn’t make anything fall into coherency. Everything…

The conversation carried on, the person behind him had their arm barring the back of his neck, shoving him harder into the cell door. Cassian whimpered when he felt fingernails dig into the tender spot just behind his ear, tendrils of pain spiking into his chest.

The door in front of him clicked open and he fell through. He felt arms wrap around his shoulders and pull him deeper into the cell. He struggled against their hold, hands wrapped around his neck, and he felt fear touch him. He tried to punch, to fight back, to get them all off of him, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t move.

If this was an interrogation, it was a fucking effective one. He was disoriented, his emotions were in turmoil and he couldn’t get his eyes to focus. He wasn’t sure what they wanted, he wasn’t going to give it to them anyway, but he felt a hand slide up under his shirt and the stirrings of unwanted arousal rise up in his gut again.

Cassian wasn’t in control of his reactions, and that terrified him.

Hands scrambled at his belt, peeling the clothing away even as he tried to bat their hands away. All of his words got stuck in his throat, he couldn’t tell them to stop, he wanted them to _stop_!

One of the voices, groggy and drenched in pain spoke up, and the hands stopped their quest at his belt. An argument colored the air above him, and he heard a high shout of warning. The argument escalated, he was left alone, there was a heavy thump, a crack, and then the cell door swung shut. Cassian whimpered, shivering as he finally felt the dregs of whatever it was that was pushing on his mind fall away.

He was left, gasping and shaking, on the floor of a different cell. The other person in the cell cursed under their breath and collapsed into a cot.

Cassian lay on the floor, unmoving. Traumatized and aching, he didn’t even try and get up. Sleep eventually stole over him.

* * *

He woke up to the sounds of screaming.

Cassian rolled to his feet, coming up ready to fight. Down the hallway was the sound of a fight, heavy fists hitting flesh, a muffled whimper from whoever was being beaten. But the scream had come from the same room as him. He turned, and –

“Oh, oh sweet _stars_ , ‘Luka,” he breathed.

She was a wreck. Her neck was a motley of finger-shaped bruises, and there were long cuts and blaster-burns through her threadbare shirt – _his_ old shirt. Her nose was broken, deep bruises had spread under the sockets of each of her eyes, one of her ears was torn, missing a piece. Her lip was cut savagely deep, and the wound lanced down her chin. Violet blood stained her clothes, though he could see stains from dirt and grime as well.

She was a mess. A goddamn mess. She held her hands out to him, and he could count on one hand how many of her fingers not broken in some way. Cassian got up onto his knees and came towards her, words failing him in this moment.

“Gunna…make someone nervous, staring like that…” she said, her voice raspy and cracking.

He stared at her for a long moment, incredulous. After all this time, she sat there, broken and bleeding, and cracked the same joke. The same joke.

Cassian shook his head, remembering the events that led him here.

“Any…chance this is your doing? That this is a long con to get intelligence? That all of this was…”

She scoffed, and leaned back, clearly having spent most of her energy in sitting up.

“Ashla and Bogan, Cassian, I wish it was that. I wish that everything had gone differently. I wish you weren’t here. I wish you had… _never_ met me. I should have left you alone.”

She sighed, groaned, and turned onto her side.

“You have had the mispleasure of meeting Jheza. She’ll be back. She will always come back. She…last night, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here. You shouldn’t…I have a connection with you. I didn’t know you were around. It’s….overwhelming with her. I needed to vent. Otherwise it’d consume me,” she slurred, her voice petering out as she talked.

Cassian felt a sharp pang of sadness through his chest, and shook his head.

“What do you mean? The whole – thing that happened, that was you?”

She sighed, spat blood to the side, and collected herself.

“I…like how you sound. In the Force. You feel nice. I…I don’t know. I don’t know a very many people and you are familiar to me. So when my…when I get overwhelmed, it can be too much and I let it out for others to feel in the force, a way to keep from drowning. I thought it was just Jheza. She likes feeling that. I didn’t know you were here until…uh,” she paused, her brows furrowing. “Until you responded with pleasure in kind. I didn’t expect it, I forgot how good you felt and it made me _happy,_ you have no idea, Cassian after so long to feel _happy_. Then Jheza felt it, then she came after you. Then…this.”

Cassian looked around the cell. It looked lived in, with some small amounts of personal effect, bedding, and a cup being the sum total of all her affects. The bedding was bloodstained, missing strips where she had made makeshift bandages, some of which he could see peeking out beneath the tatters of what had once been his shirt.

“She’s going to bring a ysalamiri. To punish me. I’m going to be blinded. It’s not going to be good for me. It’s going to drive me mad. That’s what she wants. Madness. I should have…Ashla and Bogan, Cassian I should have never left…” she sighed again. “But if I hadn’t left you would have died. All of you would have. The Balance needed it. Someone had to. It had to be me…”

She seized up, her muscles tightening hard enough to open some of the half-healed wounds, and a low, pained moan spilling from her mouth. Cassian heard footsteps from outside the cell and turned. A man was there, holding a large box with a…lizard inside. A lizard on a tree stump. The man set it down, smirked at the Miraluka, sneered at Cassian, and then left.

He knew better than to ask about food, even though his stomach was tight and grumbling at the thought.

He looked back to the Miraluka, who had gone even paler beneath the bruises and was shaking. She clutched her arms in on herself, rolling halfway onto her stomach and breathing heavily through her nose. She clutched at his old shirt, half-burying her face in the collar and trying to meter her breathing.

“Are you…’Luka, what can I do for you?” he said softly, edging closer to her.

There was silence for a long moment. He thought she could have fallen asleep or passed out, but –

“There’s nothing to do. With a ysalamiri – they obstruct the Force, I can’t – I’m blind and hurt and…Jheza is going to,” she stopped to take a deep breath. “I should start at the beginning, I think.”

Cassian was quiet, waiting for her to continue. He hated how part of him couldn’t let go of this being an interrogation. He couldn’t help the surge of victory in his chest at maybe having a way into understanding more of the Miraluka than anyone else, he couldn’t stop the eager leaning in, the way his heart skipped a beat. This was information, something so intrinsic to something so secret, and…

“Not now, ‘Luka. I think right now you need to sleep.”

She huffed, coughed, spat.

“They’re just gunna take me into the pits in the morning. She’s not going to go easy. If…Cassian, if she has any,” she stopped to cough, and Cassian was at her side before the coughing fit stopped. “Cassian, she’s going to come for you too. I don’t know how but she will. She can’t put you in the pits, you’re, hah, valuable. And more valuable in one piece. It’s gunna be me. And I won’t…handle it well.”

Cassian carefully took her hand in his and lay down next to her. She sighed, and laced her fingers with his. Her sheets smelled like blood and mold. She didn’t lift her head from the collar of his old shirt, and her breathing slowed.

“I am sorry, Cassian.”

He shushed her, brushed her hair out of her face and waited. Her hand tightened briefly on his own, and Cassian ignored the sharp pang of loneliness that arced through him. There was no Force in this feeling. It was his own. He could own that much of his emotion.

* * *

* * *

[Hey! I have a tumblr (with other writing)! Check it!](http://www.saberinthenight.tumblr.com/support)


	7. Fifth Chance (Sleep)

He woke up alone. Or…well he would have been alone, if he didn’t hear the high, panicked shout that the Miraluka gave and feel a sudden, sharp, lurch as he was pushed to the side.

Cassian was up and out of the bed, lunging for the cell door, managing to slide through at the last second before it closed. The guards didn’t seem to notice him. They just dragged the Miraluka along, fingers digging into her arms, her feet kicking ineffectively, trying to find traction. The one in the back was carrying the box with the ysalamiri in it in his arms.

Cassian followed behind, dropping back trying to stay out of lines of sight, trying to sneak, trying to –

 _Oh you want to **see** what I do to her? **FINE**_.

The voice cut him to the quick, like glass carving into his chest. He flinched, dropping back against the wall of the hallway, pressing a hand over his heart. He half expected it to come away bloody.

A man came hustling down the hall, his eyes bloodshot to the point where his sclera were red, and blood dripped from his tear ducts. Cassian stumbled away, but his feet got caught on themselves and he fell, sliding down the wall.

He blinked, his vision going fuzzy around the edges again. Grabbing for something to support him, Cassian scrambled to try and get himself back on his feet. He couldn’t – every time he felt like he was close to getting up, his feet would slide out from underneath him, like the floor was covered in slick.

 The man loomed over him and picked him without preamble.

The world spun around Cassian, and for a moment, nausea strangling his movement before he could even try and struggle.

Cassian tried to struggle but all the fight bled right out of him. He gasped, trying to find something in him to fight with as the man lifted him up over his shoulder and carried him away. He kicked weakly, trying to find some air in his lungs to yell out or kick or fight back, but he couldn’t.

It was like someone had turned off his spine and stolen his voice. Cassian’s panic rose up in his gut, but there was nowhere for it to go. Nowhere. He was trapped in his own head.

_Not so **nice** is it. If only you **knew**. She’s not this **hero** , she’s a liar and I will show you, I’ll show everyone, I’ll show our entire planet just. Who. She. Is._

Cassian groaned. The voice felt like poison, like ice in his veins. It made him feel even more nauseous. He was lucky he had not had any food in…what felt like days, otherwise it all would have come up and out of him right then. As it was, he just dry heaved a couple times until the guard shifted his shoulder under Cassian’s gut, and then it was a problem of _breathing_ as the guard’s shoulder dug into the tender spot under his sternum.

He wanted to talk, he desperately wanted to talk, to get into the guard’s ear, to try and wean any sort of information out of the guard. It did not always work, but sometimes…sometimes it worked.

Anything to help the Luka. She needed him.

_Shut up. Just. Just shut up. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything._

Cassian tried to blink the black spots out of his eyes and only vaguely realized, in a dissociative way, that he wasn’t breathing. There was a vice around his chest, slowly constricting, throttling the air right out of his lungs. The more he struggled against it, the tighter it got.

Panic grew in him, until it overrode his better thoughts, cycling beyond his control in a blink. He wanted to say it wasn’t his panic, he wanted to be confident in that statement, he wanted to be certain that he was strong and sure and capable and that this was just someone – _Jheza_ – running amok in his mind like she was doing to his body. But he remembered all the other panic attacks since Scarif, he remembered the breathless nights, clutching his leg, fighting off phantom pains that the bacta tanks had long since gotten rid of.

He couldn’t breathe, not even a little bit, and the air was stagnating in his lungs.

It _burned_.

Like Scarif, it burned. His heart pounded against his ribs, memories rising up unbidden in his mind. The sand bit into his knees, his leg ached, his back hurt, he felt broken bones and tasted blood.

He smelled of sweat and saltwater and blasterfire. Jyn did not smell any better, her small body pressed tight to his, a comfort he was not certain he deserved, but one he would take anyway. His lungs burned, his skin was afire, and he couldn’t move for fear…fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear that echoed and rattled all the way through him.

And he couldn’t breathe.

It wasn’t until he was certain he was going to pass out, until his panic was overriding any movement he wanted to make as much as whatever Force was working in him, that it all released.

Cassian gasped for air, pushing himself up, trying to get out of the involuntary carry, only to be dropped unceremoniously to the ground. He hit the ground hard, catching himself on an elbow and a knee. The man escorting him picked him up by the back of the neck, set him on his feet and pushed him forward. Cassian stumbled again, but caught himself this time, without falling to his knees.

Briefly, the thought entered Cassian’s head of turning on the guy, grabbing his blaster and feeding the barrel down the guard’s throat. Cassian knew he could do it. He had done it before. It would be easy, the guy might be strong, but Cassian was damned quick, and good with his hands. He just needed to get closer and-

His legs went limp and he collapsed, spikes of agony driving themselves through his head. Cassian screamed, clutching his head with both hands.

His entire world was pain.

_YOU WILL COME AND WITNESS_ 


He felt his companion lift him up by the elbow and drag him along. Cassian blinked the pain away, and trembled. This was too much. He couldn’t handle this.

He really…he was out of his depth. So far out of his depth. He gasped for air and tried to stop shaking but this was…he couldn’t. Some deep dark panic had unwound in his chest and it was consuming him.

Shaking and battling a slew of afterimages of panic-attacks long fought off, Cassian couldn’t find it in him to resist as he had wanted to mere moments before. He was a mess. He had been a mess for a long while now, but there was something overwhelmingly different about understanding that particular fact while at the beck and call of some _other_ whom he could not see or understand.

The world around him exploded into sound when he was dragged through a door into a wide open arena. A pit dropped in his stomach and in the space in front of him. He was shoved up against a metal handrail, and cuffs clicked over his wrists, binding him in place, arms spread eagled and chest pressed to the rail.

He pulled as soon as he registered that the cuffs were keeping him from standing up straight, but they held firm, and he could not rise above a stooped bow. There was a dark laugh behind him, and a hand fell on the back of his neck.

“You are in for a _treat_ , captive one.”

Cassian’s gut dropped at the words. He knew the speaker in a strange, roundabout way - their voice had been haunting him all morning, worming into him, pulling him to pieces. He tried to jerk his head away from her hand, but she pushed down hard enough to choke him on the railing.

She held him down until he was squirming and then kept the pressure on until he finally knelt down and stilled. It was the only way he could think to get any air back into his lungs, but there was a savage part of him that rebelled, and fiercely, at the thought of having to subjugate himself.

The hand did not leave the back of his neck, an implicit threat against any movement deemed inappropriate. He knelt, sucking down air and trying to get his vision to straighten out.

These past few hours had not been kind and the panic was still in him and everything was still sideways and the Force had never felt so sick when it touched him as it did when Jheza slid into his awareness. He dry heaved, but his stomach was so empty that nothing came out.

Cassian hiccupped and a half-sob tumbled out of his mouth.

“Oh, shush. Stop. Watch her.”

His vision cleared and his head turned (against his will, against his will, stop stop stop!) back to the pit in front of them both. He felt her fingers card through his hair in a sick mockery of what…the other one had done. It was meant to be a comfort, but it made him feel sick.

He blinked and slowly, his eyes focused on what was in front of him.

A fighting pit greeted his line of sight. Constructed out of sheets of durasteel salvaged from elsewhere, roughly tacked together and stacked in a way that looked shockingly precarious, the fighting pit had clearly seen better days. The pit looked as if it had originally be meant to be a impermanent feature of the area, but as…whatever it was that was the main object of this group grew, it had been made more and more stable and permanent. Blood smeared the walls, sand dusted ground, and in the middle of the wide open pit, he saw two very important things.

The first was the box with that strange lizard, the same one that had been brought to the room with him and the Miraluka, the one that had caused her all sorts of misery.

The second was the Miraluka herself, hands up and clothes torn, a new series of bruises darkening on her jaw. Blood dripped, violet and terrifying in its amounts, from her knuckles. The scars had split across her hands, opening up lines that wept violet down to drip on the sands of the pit.

She was breathing harshly, gasping for air, chest heaving violently as she tried to catch a moment of rest. Violet tinged her teeth when she snarled. Cassian made a broken keening sound under his breath, the air getting stuck in his throat.

She was surrounded. Brawlers and fighters, wielding cudgels and fist weapons had arranged themselves in a loose circle around her, each bearing their own minor wounds, but no one else was as torn up as she was. She clearly had been fighting, and most of them only had incidental injuries. But the Luka, she was run ragged, and it was obvious that every breath _hurt_ her.

Someone stepped up, swinging wildly at her head.

Cassian panted, his voice catching in his throat. He wanted to shout a warning to her, but his voice just wouldn’t come.

He had to watch as she took a sucker punch to the back of her head, staggering forward, catching herself on the case that held the ysalamiri. She cried out, her voice swallowed by the jeers of the pit-watchers. But she pushed herself back and threw a mean elbow back in the direction of her attacker.

Her elbow pulverized the man’s nose, and before he could reel away from her and out of her range, she grabbed the front of his shirt, twisting her fist in the material, and started pummeling him.

He stumbled backwards, away from her, and she followed his movement, throwing him to the ground. She jumped atop him and began raining down blows, each slamming down with enough weight to send sand flying up into the air.

Cassian watched the man she had pinned struggle, his legs kicking out fiercely as she beat brutality down into his face.

He watched, breathless as the Luka beat the life out of the man with a fist. She did not stop until the man’s legs stopped twitching. And by then, there was a hush over the pit and the pit fighters. Her shoulders heaved with ragged breaths, and she staggered to her feet. She barely had time to try to catch her breath before one of the other fighters stepped up, swinging a cudgel at her knee.

His jaw snapped closed, clipping his tongue when he tried to call out in warning to her.

Blood filled his mouth, and he snarled. But still, no sound came out. His voice was taken from him. He couldn’t speak out against the power that robbed him off his voice. The powerlessness of it all had all the panic from before bleeding over into fury. It was one thing when he was certain it was only him suffering, when he was still trying to wrestle against a power he could not fight down, but another entirely when he saw what the extent of the cruelty was. He wanted to support the ‘Luka, give her warning, try and help her like she had helped him.

He couldn’t shout out to warn her, no matter how desperately he wanted to. He just had to watch as the Luka went down with a sharp cry of pain. She spun blindly, standing on her uninjured leg, punching towards where the pain had come from, and her strike connected hard enough to send the man quickly to the ground, clutching a broken jaw.

Unsteady now, the Luka turned her head this way and that, trying to suss out the location of her attackers. She tried to balance herself on her uninjured leg, but she weaved back and forth regardless. There was just too much damage to too many parts of her body for her to be able to stand steady, even without a ruined knee. Cassian’s heart leapt into his throat. She was weak, bleeding and battered, with only one leg to stand on.

Her back was to the rest of the group, and en masse, they attacked, rushing her from behind. She fell under the pile of bodies, her cry of shock and pain drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

He felt his hands curl into fists, but he was still cuffed, wrist and neck, to the bar. And Jheza’s hand was still on the back of his head, holding him down. With every blow, her hand would tighten in his hair until Cassian was certain she was about to rip his hair out by the root. He groaned, trying to jerk his head out of her grasp, to get away from the pain. She hissed at him, pressing herself against his back, leaning over him until her mouth was pressed against his ear.

“No, you stay like this, _just like this_. You stay like this and watch her. You understand, you learn and see.”

He blinked, and purposefully looked away.

He didn’t want to see her fighting like this. It wasn’t a fair fight, and there was nothing he could to help her. From behind him, he heard Jheza hiss.

She kicked the back of his knees, forcing him to fall against the bar he was already pinned to. With a grunt, he barely managed to catch himself, but the increased pressure against his throat made him cough and struggle to keep his balance.

“ _LOOK AT HER_ ,” the voice in his ears and head roared.

Her hands tightened in his hair and jerked his head back towards the battle. Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian saw that she was back on her feet, cudgel in hand and blood leaking freely from her broken nose. Two more of her attackers were lain out at her feet, and she was facing down the last three. Her mask had been torn off, and her shirt was sagging, a shoulder seam ripped open to expose a black bruise that was still spreading.

Jheza hissed in pleasure from behind him, but when Cassian looked away, she growled at him again.

“Keep your eyes on her,” she snapped.

He looked, and he saw the chest with the small lizard again. The other ‘Luka hadn’t been able to see when that had been brought in to their room. Ysalamiri pushed the Force out…Miralukas saw with the Force…

 _You can’t see without me_ , he thought viciously, for his voice was still gone. But the ‘Luka had read his thoughts and he thought _pointedly_ for the other’s attention.

“Don’t overstate your use. Your eyes let me see her. Look at her.”

He did not want to, he wanted to deny her, he wanted to do everything in his power to not give her what she wanted from him, but his body was not under his control. Pain shoved into his body, rattling through his bones, and even as he tried to deny it, tried to look away, he could not. He was forced to watch as the Luka…

“That isn’t her name, she never gave you her name, you miserable _fool_ , you don’t _know_ ,” the other one whispered to him, pulling his hair hard enough to make his eyes water anew.

The Luka swung the cudgel in a questing arc, trying to test out if anyone was close enough to her. The crowd’s cheers and jeers had reached a fever pitch and there was no way for her to try and listen for the sounds of an approaching combatant. She had to wait, take a hit, and then retaliate.

She limped to the side, turning her head this was and that, trying to figure out where the next strike would come from. Her leg hit the cage that had the ysalamiri in it, and she turned to look down at it. Cassian felt the hand in his hair release, and for a moment, everything was exceptionally still. The Luka’s brows furrowed, her hand tightened on the cudgel in her hand.

The pit was not quiet, jeers and cheers sounded out in equal measure, but a stillness had come over the Luka as she leaned over to place a hand on the cage. Cassian’s breath caught in his throat.

“STOP HER, STOP HER STOP HER _NOW_ ,” Jheza screamed, her voice breaking through the din of the crowd.

Cassian watched, in awe, as the Luka swung the cudgel, once, twice, thrice, and shattered the bars that protected the ysalamiri from her. There was a sickening crunch as she reached in, her hand coming away streaked in red blood from the ysalamiri.

The crowd went quiet.

Alarms blared loud, loud, louder, doors into the pit dropping open as heavily armed guards rushed in.

The Luka stood up straight, rolling her shoulder back in its socket. Slowly, she stretched out, letting wounds seep dark purple, and not flinching away from the pain it undoubtedly caused her.

Cassian was struck by the absolute _predatory_ grace of her movements.

She was injured and broken, her body undoubtedly traumatized in ways that would haunt her for the rest of her life, but she was ready to _fight_. And if the way she turned towards the people who remained in fighting shape against her was any proper indication, she was going to win.

Her head turned towards him, and he saw green eyes shot through with orange look directly into him – through him. The nausea and pain faded all at once. Jheza took her hand off his hair. He sighed, sagging against the railing, the sudden relief throwing into all the more sharp recognition of how much pain he had been in.

“ _Amerithari_ ,” the Luka said, her voice soft and breaking.

Cassian felt his own heart ache at the word. He didn’t know what it meant, didn’t understand the language, but it was laden with so much -

 _I know you, I remember you, rainfall on a warm day, held you in my arms once, please_.

He just didn’t know what to do with it.

From behind him, he heard Jheza **howl** , an animistic sound that tore at his soul. The Luka just stared, unflinching, even as guards closed in on her. She did not fight, or lift a hand against any of the guards. She advanced on the place where Cassian was, walking slowly, confidently. The cudgel dropped from her hand. She needed no weapon.

The restraints on his wrists and neck flew off, and he collapsed onto the floor in surprise. Jheza grabbed him by the shoulder and lifted him to his feet. For a moment, he saw her, her fury blinding her to the constant need to keep his eyes off of her.

Jheza was young, younger than the Luka he knew. But her mask was gone, replaced with horrific scarring, blackened around the edges across her eyes and the bridge of her nose. In places, the scars still bled violet through cracked and charred skin. Her hair was a wild mane, a mad disarray that could not be tamed by anything. She wore black and grey, and other than the terrible scarring around her eyes, there were no other apparent scars, not like the other Luka, who wore the memories of a dozen battles in easy view.

She noticed him, and with a snarl, grabbed his chin and pushed his head away. Cassian felt her power overwhelm his body’s ability to move. Jerkily, his head was pushed away from her. He couldn’t fight it as much as he had wanted to, and he looked out over the crowd, who were all quickly vacating the stands, running scared for the exits. He looked back into the pit and the Luka was still looking at him, her brows furrowed.

The guards rushed her all at once, trying to overwhelm her with force unrelenting. They got no closer to her than from where they had started their rush, each held in a vice grip that Cassian could _see_ was squeezing the air out of their lungs. She advanced slowly, stalking towards the side of the pit that their viewing platform was on.

He felt the entire platform shudder, and then sag, listing heavily to one side. Jheza staggered, her hand coming off of his arm and face, and Cassian stumbled closer to the edge, grabbing for stability against the railing he had been pinned against. The platform lurched again as Luka came closer.

Frissons of electricity zipped down Cassian’s spine as he watched her approach them. Durasteel groaned, buckling under whatever Force she was bringing to bear. The platform dipped, warping under her onslaught.

His breath caught in his throat, and for the first time in the entire day, it was because he, himself, was in awe.

She approached and he _understood_ something of what Jheza had wanted him to see. Everything previous, all of the fights, all of the battles, all of the impossibilities that had come to pass at her presence, those were not flukes.

Those were not miracles, they were not anything out of the ordinary for this woman.

Those, if anything, had been her _holding back_ , her keeping something of herself in reserve, had been her in hiding, trying to avoid the gaze of so many others.

This – _this_ was what she could really do. And even then, something nagged at him that she was still keeping something in reserve.

Sheets of durasteel flew from their moorings, warping and twisting into a staircase at the Luka’s feet. She walked slowly, purposefully, unwavering and confident towards Cassian…and Jheza.

His heart skipped a couple beats as she stepped up and over the railing he had been strapped to, stopping next to him, in between himself and Jheza. Looking at her felt like looking at the kyber crystal that formed the heart of Luke’s lightsaber moments before ignition.

He was in awe. Absolute awe.

Up close, the extent of her wounds was so much more apparent. Old wounds and new wounds wormed in brutal lines across the entirety of her body. She bled dark purple over filthy fabric, but her back was still straight, and her movements were smooth, and self-assured. He figured it was the Force allowing her to do all this, because he had seen Luke brush off injuries and then fall to them later, after the adrenaline and the Force bled out of him.

But with Luke, it always had looked like he was on edge, manic with the power he was using to hold himself together long enough to get through the fight and to a bacta tank.

The ‘Luka had no such issue.

She held herself with a regal poise. If he wasn’t certain that it was impossible for her to stand with her knee looking the way it was, he would have been assured of the fact that none of these wounds actually hurt her as much as they appeared to need to.

Without her mask, covered in blood, with clothes torn and grievously dark bruises turning her skin into a motley, she still _looked_ as if she could have stared down Draven and Mon Mothma and the entire rest of the council and demanded they listened…and Cassian was nearly positive they would have done just that. She looked capable and deadly despite it all.

“Amerithari. This is over. Stop.”

He heard her speak the words, knew her voice, but the way her mouth moved did not make the words he heard. She was speaking to Jheza, and he was “overhearing” it, an instantaneous translation that let him understand what he would otherwise be deaf to.

“ _NO_ ,” Jheza snarled. Durasteel screeched horrifically loud, peeling away from her. Cassian’s teeth hurt in sympathy.

“Amerithari, Jheza, please. This can be over. We can leave. We do not have to do this. Please. Come with me, away from this.”

The Luka’s voice was touched with pain – not bodily, but emotional, her words carrying –

 _Sorrow, I have failed you, I’m so sorry, please please, desperation, longing, love, desire, belonging_.

\- and Cassian felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He swallowed harshly, trying to blink the tears away.

The conversation went on, and he lost the rhythm and scope of it, buoyed on by an overwhelming series of images and memories and emotions that were not his alone. He kept a hand on the ruined railing, trying to stabilize himself against the onslaught.

 _Gentle touches, fingers sliding along skin, lips at the nape of the neck, love._  
-Betrayal! Loneliness, pain, missing it all, searing burning pain across the face, lost you, hate you.  
Loss, loneliness, pain, missed you, lost you, followed you, denied it all, last look back, moving forward.  
-Pain and pain and pain. Found self again, everything hurts. Loss, hole where there was once something precious. How could you??  
Followed you, I followed you, left everyone and followed you.  
**_-IT IS NOT ENOUGH_**.

He flinched, shuddering and trying to pull himself back into his own mindspace, out of the whirling cacophony of colors and thoughts and images.

Staggering back against the railing, Cassian felt blood start to drip from his nose. Shocked, he held a hand up to his face. Blood drenched his hand almost immediately, and Cassian did his best to lean forward, trying to ensure that he didn’t choke on the blood hat was pouring freely from his face. The pain didn’t come until the ‘Luka turned her attention to him. Jheza mirrored the ‘Luka, and he felt her rage wash over him.

“Amerithari. **ENOUGH**.”

Jheza pulled back, flinching away from the ‘Luka with a soft sound of surprise. The ‘Luka was careful to step towards Cassian, her hands coming up, and the Force flickering around her fingers. Ignoring Jheza, she carefully brushed her thumbs down the bridge of his nose. The Force felt like ice, but the bleeding stopped almost as quickly as it had started.

He did not move away from her touch, even as she spread her fingers out, fanning them across his cheeks. Cassian trusted her. Which was unfortunate, as he considered the depth of the danger he was in as the Force danced across his skin, guided by the ‘Luka, because if he had not trusted her, he would, perhaps, not be here, facing down not one, but _two_ Miraluka, only one of which he was even a little assured of her lack of ill intent towards him.

She leaned in and rested her forehead against his. Cassian felt his pain bleed away. The ‘Luka sighed.

“I am so…sorry, Cassian,” she sighed out, reaching out to wrap an arm around his waist. The feeling was indescribably relaxing and comforting. He had to try hard to not collapse against her.

“Take them! Take them back to the room!” Jheza screamed, finally finding her voice again.

The ‘Luka shook her head and stepped away from Cassian. He chased the pressure of her forehead with his. She rested her hand on his shoulder.

The guards swarmed them, and this time, the ‘Luka did not fight back against them. She went with grace and dignity, her head held high as the guards reached for her. Their hands were turned away before they could touch her, but she went with them anyway. Cassian was handled roughly, one of the guards grabbing his arm and holding him steady.

He groaned in pain, the sudden sharp ache in his shoulder coming back with a vengeance. He nearly bit his tongue to keep from making any further sounds of pain. Cassian stubbornly did not want to give these guards the pleasure of knowing how much that had hurt him.

But their attention seemed wholly fixed on the ‘Luka, who walked amongst them like she was surrounded by a veritable honor guard. She seemed unbothered by the half dozen blasters pointed directly at her. He halfway thought she just was unaware of the arsenal that surrounded her, but one of the guards moved to nudge her with the muzzle of the blaster, and she moved deftly out of the way.

“Don’t,” she said firmly, turning her head towards the offending guard so that he knew, unquestioningly, that she was addressing him.

The guard paled, and pulled his gun further from her. She nodded only once in response, and then went back to “looking” ahead. Her calm demeanor only seemed to further unsettle the guards, but with no way to try and discipline her, Cassian was afraid he would become the target of their misplaced anger.

No such thing happened, however. The guard holding his shoulder and arm kept the pressure on, and by the time they returned to the cells, none of them had made any further movements to harass the ‘Luka or him. Some of them would cast nervous glances at the ‘Luka as they walked, but none of them said anything, or even did anything to try and correct her movements. She knew where she was going. No one needed to guide her. They made it all the way back to the cell the ‘Luka had been kept in, past Cassian’s cell, and no one made any attempt to separate them.

The door was opened for them and she walked in without complaint. There was a hush over the guards at that. Cassian was thrown in, with slightly more force than was actually necessary, but the ‘Luka caught him in her arms and gently lowered him to the bed. Exhaustion hit him like a bag of rocks, and all the strength sapped out of him. He was so tired. Worn out. But…

But she was bleeding still, and needed medical help, despite his own sudden need to relax. He sat up, reaching out for her, and she staggered towards him, falling into the bed next to him. Carefully, he wrapped an arm around her, trying to push away the bubbling background thoughts about how _good_ her body felt pressed against his. He knew he needed to focus on medical care, on ignoring the troubling exhaustion that dogged him, and especially ignoring the fingerlings of arousal pricking at his chest.

The ‘Luka shuddered up against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist, rolling her body against his with a breathy sigh. Cassian groaned, turning his head into her touch, his mouth opening and thoughts fleeing before the sudden pressure of pleasure that flushed through him. It was not appropriate. She was injured. He needed to tend to her injuries. Needed to…to

 


	8. Fifth Chance (Rise)

The door to the cell slammed open. Cassian jumped up, the ‘Luka slid off of him to the side of the bed with a rattling groan.

One of the guards – not one of the ones who had escorted them back from the pit – was at the door, holding a medkit and a bottle of water. The guard just set the kit and water down, and then reached back out of the cell to grab a tray of food. The food, he dropped, unceremoniously, just out of the way of the door before slamming it shut again. Cassian waited for the guard’s footsteps to fade away before making to slink out of the bed.

The ‘Luka’s arm wrapped around his waist and held him in place. It was impossible to move, mostly because he just didn’t want to. He was, if not properly comfortable, at least comforted by her body next to his.

In a display of her mastery of the Force that honestly should have startled or unsettled him, the ‘Luka picked up the food, the medical supplies, and the water and pulled them towards the bed. Cassian just lifted a hand to grab the items out of the air, and brought them to rest on the bed. The ‘Luka sighed happily, but did not get up.

Cassian took a deep breath, trying to focus. He needed to eat. The food was….not good. Standard “you’re in prison” food. Bland, with the barest minimum amount of nutrition for most humanoid species, but it was food and he was hungry. The ‘Luka mumbled something he couldn’t catch fast enough, and then reached for some of the food, messily shoveling it into her mouth before collapsing back onto the bed with a grunt. Cassian followed suit, trying for a slightly more dignified response but…

Stars and dust, he was so tired and hungry. He just wanted to eat and fall asleep and not wake up here. There was so much to do, but really, really, honestly, truly, he just wanted to sleep. Sleep and not wake up here.

The ‘Luka sat up just far enough to grab the medkit and water, and went to work on her wounds, splashing water over the cuts and scrapes, not bothered by the water seeping into the mattress, or the streams of violet blood that went with the water. Cassian rolled over, rifling through the medkit until he found a surgical thread and a sterile needle. Most of her wounds, while not superficial, were not so deep as to require stitching beneath the probably expired bacta patches, but Cassian grabbed her left hand and went to work.

She did not complain as he worked, holding her hand steady and using her other hand to slap bacta patches over the worst of the other wounds she had sustained. A tank would be needed to fix some of the more severe internal injuries – broken bones and bruised organs were not generally in the domain of even the best of the bacta patches, and even those would need her to sit still and rest for weeks. Weeks she undoubtedly did not have, not even if Jheza was even a little bit generous before she came back to exact revenge.

Cassian took careful precautions as he applied a thinner bacta bandage across her knuckles, where he had finished stitching. The scar was probable. If the patch could not stay on long enough, and her body had to take back over, there’d be another scar on her body.

He heard a ripping sound, and with a sigh, the ‘Luka got rid of the last vestiges of his old shirt.

“Put this on over the bacta. They don’t always check and it helps…to hide them.”

Cassian nodded pressing his forehead against her shoulder as he slowly tore his old shirt into as even of strips as he could manage. He was exhausted. Every movement hurt, and took more from him than he had to give, but she was bleeding onto the bed, and still moving to try and help herself as best she could. The bed was not clean, and some of her wounds were very deep.

She could get an infection. She could die.

After all of this, she could die from something as non-dangerous as a simple infection from lack of bacta patches and filthy circumstance.

Cassian pulled her close as she finished wrapping over her wounds, moving slowly and gently. Or at least, trying to be gentle.

She grunted softly when his hand strayed across a wound, seizing up for a moment before sighing and relaxing into his touch. He did not want to think about how good that little amount of physical contact felt. Or how good it was that she trusted him to touch her wounds with no worry that he was going to hurt her. He did not want to think about how that made his chest feel warm. That would only complicate things.

But the ‘Luka made herself comfortable next to him, and it was impossible to deny how it _felt_ to have her body against his.

“We should…I should…Cassian, I need to talk to you. What happened, I mean, about what happened. It…she will be mad. Mad and hurt. I was not kind or gentle with her. She expected that much, but I don’t believe she expected me to be so mad at her.”

The ‘Luka sighed, long and low, wrapping an arm around his waist, burrowing her face into the crook of his neck and breathing deeply.

“’Luka, we don’t have to do this. Not right now. You’re injured. Tired. You-“

“Cassian, please. Shut up. I need to tell you why we’re here.”

_If I talk with my mouth she does not expect the mind as well._

A tremble raced down his spine like electricity.

“Then…speak, ‘Luka.”

She spoke, telling him a great many things, words that wrapped around him, comforted, distracted him. He did not know how to parse the arousal and attraction that worked into the words. He wanted to…

 _Hold your thoughts, Cassian. There will be…time for **that** _ (oh gods every one of his fantasies lain out on her skin, oh stars, oh fuck, oh **fuck** ) _later, but for now. Cassian, we must leave this place._

He nodded to the words she was saying, reaching out to gently touch her chest, her waist, her neck. Stars and dust, she was gorgeous. Everything about her sang to him, and her words in his ears and in his mind itself only made him ache the harder for her.

 _Oh, you are going to distract me, Cas-siannn_ , she purred in his mind, her hips pressing up against his hands. _But wait, wait wait for now, listen. I have an idea. Your belt. It has a comlink right? Emergency, for the Rebellion?_

He nodded, dropping his head to her shoulder, his mouth opening to say **something** but all his words got jumbled up and he just groaned. His thigh tensed, edging towards her before backing away at her warning hiss.

He moved his leg away from hers, trying to get her the space she needed to relax.

 _You are distracting, my star. The one on my belt. Your-my belt. The one I took after our_ (moaning, shortened breath, arched back, legs spread, mouth open, that tight feeling in his gut, sigh, breathless) _It is yours. The signal from it would signal the rebellion. She would think it would call others. Reinforcements. We could make an escape._

He nodded.

He nodded and his mouth pressed against her neck. He wanted to bite, to nip, to mouth at her flesh. He wanted. Stars, he ached for her, he wanted her right now, her body was right next to his, and she had just kicked the everloving tar out of people. He ached for her.

“Not…not a good time, Cassian. I need yo-uh, uhhhn, _Cassian_ ,” she slurred, arching her back and grunting as her body protested the movement.

His hands roamed her body, carefully skimming over the wounds she had. Oh, stars, he wanted her. He had never wanted anything more than he wanted her right now. He shouldn’t want her at all, shouldn’t want to feel her skin against his, or to kiss away the blood on her mouth.

Seeing her wrecked, bleeding, broken, fighting, it just _did_ something to him.

He moaned against her neck, opening his mouth wide and gently, gently pressing down on her skin with his teeth. She trembled, a hand coming up to card through his hair. Her nails rasped his scalp and lightning raced down his spine.

“’Luka,” he breathed, slowly turning towards her.

He straddled her hips, doing his best to be gentle but, stars, he needed his mouth on hers, needed to taste her lips and tongue. The ‘Luka moaned his name, and he felt the Force rumbled through his chest. He wanted to, stars, he wanted to fuck her.

She mumbled something against his mouth, slow to move and react to his sliding hands and mouth.

Cassian nipped her lip, careful to avoid where the skin was broken. She gasped, leaning up into the kiss. He wrapped his hands around the back of her neck, pulling her up against his mouth, not wanting to allow her any way to escape him.

He did not want her to move away from his mouth. He was kissing her. He would give anything of himself to keep this moment forever. He wanted nothing but her. Carefully, he pulled her legs apart, settling himself in between them, letting her rest her thighs on his. She chirred at him, shifting ever so slightly when her back twinged at the strain.

He kissed her hard, pinning her down against the thin mattress, his mouth slanting across hers. Demanding was not a word enough for what he felt when his tongue flicked across hers. She tasted like the void between stars, tasted like the…like…

“Fuck, _‘Luka_ ,” he groaned, biting her lip.

Blood flooded his mouth, and it tasted _sweet_ on his tongue. Cassian knew that it was just his body reacting to an alien’s physiology, he knew it didn’t mean anything, he knew all of that but at the same time, it made something in his chest _howl_.

Of course her blood was sweet. Of course it was. She was bleeding and broken and she keened for him when he pulled away. That was sweet.

Her blood dripped from his mouth, landing on her neck and chin. He watched the bloodstains spread, purple and fresh over her skin. The sight made his cock ache with how hard it was. He wanted her so goddamn badly that he had a hard time even thinking about anything other than ravaging her in this moment.

The Force roared in his head when he leaned back down over her, pressing his hips to hers, grinding his cock against her.

The ‘Luka mumbled something against his mouth, and he could not catch his breath enough to make any sort of coherent response. She moaned lowly when he jerked his hips against hers. Chasing friction and the every minute sounds of pleasure that escaped her lips, Cassian leaned down over her. He pressed his forehead to hers and roughly – gently – _roughly_ rocked his hips against hers.

“Mmmnph, _Cassian_ , pl-ah-ease, ashht’et, Cassian, **Cassian**!” she screamed, her fingers reaching up to dig into his shoulders and pull him tighter to her.

His movements were short, jerky, not entirely in his control as he sought out the pleasure his body had been denied for…not long at all, but since last night, he had been consumed, consumed, _consumed_ , by this. He needed. He ached. She needed. She ached. Her body hurt, her body was broken and barely healing, but the Force roared in her chest, rolling through her body, and Cassian was helpless to stop.

His orgasm stole upon him with no preamble, shooting through his entire body.

Beneath him, the ‘Luka’s back seized up, and she cried out in ecstasy. He looked down at her and his heart hurt.

Slowly, he rolled to the side, off of her, suddenly concerned about the painful motley of bruises and wounds all over her body. His pants were sticky with his seed, and his body hurt, and his head was fuzzy. Exhaustion slapped him upside the head and he collapsed into the bed next to her.

The ‘Luka huffed at him, turning her face to him.

“You should sleep, Cassian…” she slurred, her head dropping to his shoulder. “Sleep.”

He wanted to get more comfortable. Wanted to check on her. Wanted to clean himself up, wanted to not wake up in the morning covered in grime and his own cum but…she was so comfortable. Her body was warm and soft against his. Her breathing evened out, her body relaxed, and he _felt_ her fall asleep.

That was an intimacy he was rarely offered.

Yes, they were imprisoned, and he was going to wake up in the morning aching, sticky, and sore, but right then, in that moment, all he wanted to do was stay with her. Sleep with her. It was soothing. He needed this.

Not…not that he needed to be in prison with an embattled Miraluka. But there was…there was something about what he was doing that made things make sense. Made the world go quiet around the edges again. Soothed something torn ragged.

He fell asleep and did not think of it any longer.

* * *

He woke in the morning, groggy, confused, hungry, and hurting. But comfortable.

The Miraluka was curled against his side, one of her legs thrown over his, her head pillowed by his arm. She was still asleep. Or, at least he thought she was. She wasn’t moving, her breaths were coming slow and steady, and she didn’t seem to be aware of him.

In the night, bruises had darkened across her skin, deep and angry violet splotches across her skin. Some of the broken and raw edges of her wounds seeped violet still. Some of the wraps over the bacta were tinged lavender as well. She was still bleeding. She had been hurt badly.

Coherent thought came slowly to him.

Carefully, he ran his fingers down her side, skimming her injuries gently. He felt pings of pain echo down his own body. His breath caught in his throat. Even without her being awake, the Force in her still resonated within him.

She mumbled something in her sleep, and turned, pressing herself tighter to his body.

Cassian’s heart melted in his chest. He wanted to never let her go, not when she was like this. She was here, with him, relaxed and loose against his body. She was warm and comforting without even trying to be. She wanted him there. She wanted him there and he wanted her there and they were just _together_.

Sure, they were in prison, sure they were hurt, she more than he, but…if he ignored that, if he ignored the way his body ached, and the way echoes of her pain rumbled through him, if he ignored that and just let the moment wash over him, it was beautiful.

“Cassian?” she mumbled.

His name, Stars, no one said his name like she did and he didn’t care why that was true, because she said it like no one else did. It made everything better to hear his name said like that. He took a deep breath.

“Yeah, ‘Luka?”

“My name is Phrimelage { _sunrise, molten gold on marble, water rushing past smooth stone}_. Y’can call me Phrim.”

He blinked, the Force translating and giving further insight into what it was she was saying. She was…those were…this was…

“Phrim?” he said back, trying out the taste of the word in his mouth.

She purred at him, nuzzling his neck.

“You do good for not having the same abilities I do, Cassian. I didn’t think it’d sound right coming out someone else’s mouth, but it’s…nice. Nice to hear you say it,” Phrim said softly.

Cassian didn’t move particularly fast to get up out of their bunk. The world outside of this place they shared was harsh and cruel and would bring them pain. He didn’t want to get up. This was a rare moment of comfort. He did not want to ruin it by having to think about what would come next.

There was a rattle from outside the cell they shared, a guard coming by to check on them. Cassian kept an arm around her waist and stared at the guard. The same red-eyed guard that had grabbed Cassian before was back, staring at them through the grates of the cell door. His eyes bled as he looked in at the two of them.

“Jheza, if you’re going to blind a man, be gentle,” Phrim said darkly, reaching a hand up, the Force dragging along behind the movement.

“I will do exactly as I please with whomever I please to do it with,” the man said acerbically, blood dripping from his nose to stain the front of his shirt even more.

“I know.”

That didn’t seem to be the response that Jheza or the guard had expected, because there was a good long time of the two of them staring at each other. Cassian rather felt like he was an unwanted hanger-on to the situation at hand. The two Miraluka were figuring out their own thing, their relationship and how it was changing now that they were both off-planet. His addition to this, this had all been an accident.

 _He_ wasn’t supposed to be here.

He didn’t belong here, didn’t deserve the woman who lay, languid and relaxed despite the horrid wounds across her body, in the circle of his arms. She was beyond him. The both of them were. This was not what he had been trained for, and he still did not necessarily want to leave. Or have her leaving.

“Leave the human. Come with me. Come back away with me. Let us leave this entire place behind, just the two of us. Come back to me and we’ll make it right again. No one will ever touch us, no one will stop us, it will be exactly as we wanted, I promise,” the guard said.

Phrim shifted in the bed, moving as if she were going to get up and approach the door. The guard even took a step back, a smile that was equal parts relieved and manic breaking across his face. Being made to speak for another was disconcerting and he was nearly done as long as the other one came with him.

But she didn’t stand up. She remained in bed with Cassian, stretching a leg, wincing as her hips screamed in agony.

“You know I can’t do that. You know I can’t join you, Jheza.”

The guard screamed, and for a moment, it was only Jheza’s fury. Then, it was the guard screaming, his hands clawing at his eyes. He bled from the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and then as he clawed the skin away from his eyes, the trauma driving him to move faster and scream louder.

Cassian could not tear his eyes away, even as Phrim scoffed beneath her breath and turned back to lay down fully. She pressed her face to Cassian’s shoulder, nuzzling over one of the harsher scars there. He wanted to turn away from the guard who was now, very clearly, trying to pull his own face off. The guard was screaming nonstop, clawing his nose off, pulling his eyes out of their sockets.

“Jheza likes to make them hurt by the end,” Phrim said, dispassionately. Uninterested.

“It’s cruel,” Cassian whispered, finally closing his eyes and turning away.

The guard’s screaming grew to a fever pitch. It was clear he was trying to ask for help, to beg something of the two of them, but his words never made any sense, and eventually, he stopped screaming, only breathing harshly, whimpering and crying through a ruined face.

“That’s Jheza. The cruelest of the Miraluka. The worst of us. She was exiled for this. It’s why they took the knowledge of home from her. It’s why they abandoned her. She does not deserve home if that is how she treats people. We are Miraluka. We are meant to be better than this.”

The guard wheezed out his last breath, and died.

Elsewhere, down the hallway, muffled and horrified, came a scream and a rather sickening-sounding thump. Phrim winced, flinching away from the sound. Cassian wanted to console her, but he was more concerned with the sounds that were coming from down the hallway. He didn’t want to look away from the door in case something bad was coming.

“Relax, Cassian. Just relax. She can’t hurt you. Only others. And she will. But we will leave soon,” Phrim said, not at all dropping her voice down, pressing her mouth to his neck, a shudder of pleasure dripping down his spine at the contact.

A new guard appeared at the door as she spoke to him, and Cassian could not shush her fast enough to keep the guard from clearly noticing what was being said. He watched the new guardsman’s eyes fill with blood, and red tears began streaming down the guard’s face.

“Last chance, come with me. Leave your human boy. Come back with me. We’ll leave immediately. I’ll take you away from here and we’ll never be parted again, my love.”

Phrim took a long, shuddering breath and turned her face further into Cassian’s neck, seeking the comfort of his touch while faced with the specter of her past and everything she had come to regret.

“I’m not going with you, Jheza. You know I can’t. Not after everything you did.”

“Then why are you _here_!?!” the guard shouted, his eyes bleeding faster now, the skin around them blackening as the dark side of the Force clawed at the Guard’s face.

“You brought me. This was not my choice. I left-“

“To _find me_! And now you are here and you don’t want me? You – you – you’ve _abandoned_ me for this human? For some blind man who cannot even see you as you are? A broken thing, someone so far beneath you? **_WHY_**?!”

Phrim did not respond, lying still and not turning her head towards the Guard. Cassian knew she did not need to turn her head towards something to see, the Force-Sight was all encompassing and she had no eyes to need to direct anyway. But the move was one that sought comfort from him, and he couldn’t really stop the way he pulled her closer, protective of this warrior who had fought so much already and was decorated with wounds and scars that would have stopped lesser people. She wanted comfort and he was going to give it.

He stared, brows drawn down and mouth set into a thin line at the possessed guard.

“Do not pretend as if you could even begin to protect her, _human_. You are weak and frail and I will destroy you if you get in my way.”

He felt cold fingers of power pressing against his temples, trying to dig in harder, to peel him back from his own skin and _hurt_ him. Cassian grunted, trying to shake the feeling off, trying to resist whatever it was that the other Miraluka was trying to do to his brain. The last time this had happened he had ended up being an unwitting viewfinder for the one Phrim was talking to.

“That is. **ENOUGH**. Jheza,”

The cold vanished, and Cassian relaxed. Phrim had not moved, but her words had been clear and commanding. The guard scoffed, and turned away, staggering down the hallway away from them both.

Phrim did not move immediately from her position at Cassian’s side, taking a deep, long breath to try and calm herself down. She pulled Cassian closer to her, hugging him tight, and then let him go, slowly sitting up and kicking her legs out of bed.

She cradled her forehead in her hands for a moment.

Cassian sat up behind her, uncertain if she wanted more contact, or if she needed a moment to herself. Whatever it was that she was doing, or whatever it was that she had done, it had clearly distressed her in some way. His instinct was to try and comfort her, but before he could really decide what he wanted to do, Phrim stood up.

“We aren’t going to have much time. She is going to go grab the comlink. Your friends will be signaled. They will figure out that it is a trap. They will begin evacuations. We will have to fight our way out. I do not feel like this is going to go well. Something bad is going to happen.”

Her voice was tired, resigned to some sort of tragedy that she seemed to see as imminent. Cassian was familiar with the feeling, but he doubted he ever had felt it as keenly as she seemed to. Or perhaps there was simply more at play here than he understood.

Phrim could speak through the mind itself, communicate soundlessly, wordlessly with anyone she chose, it seemed. Certainly there were some limits – everything had limits, after all – but he had watched her fight. Seen her time and again, and it seemed impossible and beyond anything that should be possible even in dreams. Maybe it was only because they had never really spent time together that wasn’t in the middle of a firefight, or blisteringly drunk, trading heavy handed overtures of interest and the heavy slide of body on body.  

He could not really parse what it was that he wanted to say to her. It felt like he should offer a comfort, something that would gladden the heart, or at the very least assure her that this was not all about to go sideways. Their plan, however, rather depended on things going wrong. That Jheza would alert the Rebellion, the Rebellion would come and then they would…escape.

He would go back to the Rebellion. He would give his report. This would all be over and he wouldn’t be some prisoner on a planet he wasn’t even sure was within the range of any of the Rebellion’s signal-towers. He had to hope and trust and do everything right so that they would get out of here.

Cassian had to trust.

Believe.

He had thought he died on Scarif. He had thought he had died so many times since then, and every single time, it had been _Phrim_ that had saved him.

And he realized he had never asked why. If this went wrong, and Phrim certainly seemed to think that it would, this could very well be his last chance to ask her. To get the answers that had been driving the two of them together.

“Phrim…why did you…why any of this? Scarif, and everything in between, why did you do it? How did you do it?”

Cassian reached out to put a hand on Phrim’s shoulder. She shrugged his hand off and stood. Her brows were drawn together, and she held a hand up to Cassian.

“I…Cassian…” she started, turning her head away from him. “I don’t think you would understand. I don’t know if I can even start to explain what happened. Why I am here. What is…what was supposed to happen. I told you I was here to see Chirrut. That had…that had to change. I had to change.”

Her shoulders slumped. She was struggling with the words. The pain, the stress, the sickening feeling that was growing in her gut, gnawing at her, pulling at threads she couldn’t make sense of in the moment because everything _hurt_ so much in that moment. All of it hurt.

She staggered to the opposite wall, leaning hard against the wall, pressing her forehead against the stone of the wall. Cassian watched her carefully. If she had eyes, he was certain they would have been screwed shut. The bacta patches he had put on her last night were peeling off of her from behind the makeshift bandages, stained purple. Bruises peeked out from the edges of the bandages, traumas too deep for expired bacta to even try and heal properly.

If any of his fighters or spies had ever looked like that, he’d have done everything he could to get them retired, at least for a week. Maybe a few days in a full tank of bacta.

Something better than some expired bacta patches over broken bones and whatever else had happened to her.

She deserved better.

“Cassian. I left to follow Jheza across the stars. She was exiled, and rightfully so. I never denied that she deserved what she had was sentenced to, but I…followed her. I had to. I loved her. I followed her and lost my home and my everything. I thought I could still do good. By her. Find her, bring her back from the precipice she had fallen off of. In the Force, I thought I heard things that I could do better. People I could save. I asked the Sene…I should’ve asked the Sene, but I didn’t. I heard Chirrut in the Force and I came. I wanted to help. Jheza was gone, and I needed something, anything, to prove that my leaving had not been a mistake. I heard him, and I came. I felt the power, the destruction, the anger of that machine. I knew it needed to be stopped. I wanted to help.”

She tried to collect herself, sagging forward, only just barely managing to catch herself from falling. With a resigned grunt she turned to put her back against the wall before sliding down until she was sitting on the floor again. She didn’t curl up in on herself, her legs splayed out in front of her. Her body language was resigned. Relaxed, but resigned.

Whatever it was that was in her was slowly leaking out.

Phrim sighed.

“The Sene saw what I did. They understood, though they may not have agreed with what I had done in leaving, or what I had done since then, but they felt Chirrut, and the Force, and everything that had happened through me when they reached out to speak again. They wanted to honor what he had done. They sent me to find him again. And gave me something to give him. I had to find him again. And then…then everything. Everything else. I’m…sorry. For all of this. I couldn’t let you die on Scarif. Not you, not Jyn, not Baze, not Chirrut, not Bodhi…none of you. Not after what you had done. Nothing you had done could be forgotten.”

She covered her face with both of her hands, scrubbing away the dirt and blood tiredly.

“What you did. The things you and everyone else were capable of, what you chose to do in the face of horrible odds and the knowledge that no one would help you. I had to. I couldn’t stand by and let it happen. I’d never have been able to live with myself if I just felt it all happening and didn’t intervene. I was a member of the Sene, I was charged with foresight and foreknowledge, I…I wanted to carry that task, that holy order forward. I wanted to still be the person I had been raised to be, even after blaspheming the order of my world as I did by leaving to chase a woman I loved across the stars after she had been justifiably exiled.”

Silence followed her words.

Cassian didn’t know what to say. He had the answers he had been wondering of, or at least the start of the answers he needed. But…

Slowly, he got out of the bed and moved to kneel down next to her. He didn’t move to touch her, just sat next to her and sat in silence. She looked at him briefly, shook her head, and turned away again.

“I’m. sorry. I’m so sorry, Cassian. None of this went the way I wanted it to.”


	9. Last Chance (Falls Apart)

There was silence between the two of them for a long while. Cassian had a lot to think about, and Phrim…well she seemed preoccupied. The quiet was not a specifically discomfiting one, just, perhaps, one overlong for what had been said.  

Phrim took a deep, clarifying breath and stood up.

“We won’t have long. She’ll move quickly and we need to be ready. You good to go?” Phrim muttered.

Cassian nodded. He was not injured, not as much as she was, and she was already finding her feet and trying to stretch her body out. To say that she hurt was a major understatement. The bacta patches could only do so much in a single night, and she had been grievously injured over the past…few months. No great amount of rest had been afforded to her.

There was still work to do, and she was one of the very few people who could do anything about Jheza before this all spiraled out of control. Not that it had not already gone a little too far already, but Jheza had been contained, and that time was coming to pass. She could not be allowed to go out into the rest of the universe. Jheza had to be stopped. However that that had to come to pass, it had to come to pass.

Phrim was exhausted. All the way through her broken bones.

She walked to the door, pressing her forehead to the grates that contained the two of them. Cassian watched, not knowing if he should offer assistance or any words of comfort. She had no visible way to break out, and he was not comfortable with watching another person have their free will stripped away to get them out.

She did not say anything, or try and ask him for help with anything. She just stood at the door, forehead pressed against it, taking a few long, deep breaths. Cassian gave her time and space. He had no particular urge to question whatever it was she was going to do next. Discomfort dogged him. Discomfort with where he was now, discomfort with looking at _Phrim_ and knowing that there was something _else_ there, discomfort with Jheza, discomfort with the situation, discomfort with the idea of how they were going to escape.

Nothing about this was comfortable, and even though Cassian was very well accustomed to living in the uncomfortable areas of the world, this still seemed to go just a touch beyond the pale. The Force was a story for most of his life, and the more he interacted with Phrim, the more real it got, and the more real it got, the more terrifying it became.

Jheza could make people do whatever she wanted.

Could Phrim do the same?

Definitely. She could.

Had she?

A nervousness touched him as he thought about what had happened and tried to make sure that everything that had happened was something he would have done. It was hard to say – he was not much one for kissing pretty people in alleyways after getting shot at in a seedy bar. He was not much one for anything like what he had been doing, but he couldn’t say that it was entirely out of character because when he had been away from her, it had still burned him with excitement and anticipation.

The Force was powerful, but it couldn’t span star systems.

Right?

“We’re going to go on my mark, just stay behind me, alright? I can get us to the port, and hopefully your friends are in the area and get to us before too long. Jheza has yet to sound the alarm, but when she sends that signal, we’ll have to move quicker than expected to get where we want to be,” Phrim whispered to him, looking at him over her shoulder.

He knew that she did not have eyes, knew that she did not need to turn to look at him, but chose to do so, for whatever reason.

Up until recently, he had considered these things a kindness, something she had done to make him feel more at ease, but now, with everything he had learned and the nagging sense of wrong-ness that dogged him now made him wary.

Cassian nodded anyway. What else was he going to do? Stay in this cell alone and rot because he wasn’t certain about the person he was stuck with? That would have left him in far worse circumstances. He could trust her for as long as it takes to get them both out of this cell. It did not matter. It could not matter. He had to get out of here. Get back to the Rebellion. Get back to the things he knew, to what made sense, and get away from…all of this.

This was a fucking awful turn of events.

Phrim turned back to stare out from between the grates of their cell door. There was a tension in her shoulders, a coiled power that was waiting to be unleashed. He had seen predatory intent before, looked at captured krayt dragons and seen that same tension, the buildup of pressure under and in their muscles. Phrim was a predator, something beyond him, a relic of a people he had hardly ever heard of. What he had stumbled into, what she had dragged him in to, what the _fuck_ was he supposed to do from here?

He stood behind her, a good distance away, knowing that if she wanted to hurt him, she would not need to touch him to hurt him. She could easily hurt him the same way Jheza had done, hurt him as much as Jheza had hurt the guards she had sent to harass them. She could crush him the way Vader crushed the throats of those who stood against him. He did not _think_ Phrim would hurt him, but he realized he could not _know_ she would not, and this was not a fight he was even close to confident to thinking he could win.

“Quiet your mind that aches with questions, Cassian. You are thinking so loud. I…I promise I will keep you safe. As safe as I can. I promise. I know you don’t have a reason to believe me. Please try to anyway. I’m going to get you back to the Rebellion,” Phrim said tiredly, not turning her head this time.

“That does not put me at ease. You’re reading my mind without my permission, you could do everything Jheza does and – dammit, I want to believe the best, but I don’t understand this. Any of this.”

She did not seem to be offended, but she didn’t look away from the door, either. Some of the tension in her shoulders slowly bled away, but not enough for her to truly be relaxed again.

“I know. I do not ask you to understand. Just to trust me for a little bit longer. I know I ask much of you, and what I’ve said does not make you feel comfortable with me. I have no comfort to offer you anymore. And I am sorry about that. All I can tell you now is that you are, as much as it may not sound like it, or feel like it, you are under my protection. And that means something to me, and to the world around us. You won’t die before I do. I can promise that.”

Cassian just stared at her back. He knew he had been out of his depth dealing with her this entire time. The lightsaber, the incredible Force mastery, everything she had done between their first meeting and now, he had _known_ that she outstripped him in some deep way that he would never really be able to match, and he had been alright with that until now. Now he understood more of just how deep that line went, how much she could control, what she – or someone like her, with less scruples could do – and he was uncomfortable.

The silence stretched on between the two of them for a long, long time. She did not move from her position at the door. Her hands slid through the gaps, elbows resting on the crossbar, her forehead still pressed to the door.

He ached for her touch. He wanted to comfort her, to let her relax again. As fast as the suspicion had come and overwhelmed him, it cooled.

The collar of her shirt shifted, revealing one of the bacta patches he had helped her put on during the previous night. Cassian remembered the feel of the soft and gentle trust offered to him in that moment by a fighter who had every reason to not let anyone else near her at all. She had let his fingers trail over bruises and deep wounds, and had never flinched from him. She had let him press hand and inquisitive touch to her wounds and did not snarl or sneer.

She had trusted him when she was exhausted. Maybe he did not have any reason to believe she had well and truly been exhausted. Maybe that had all been one long ploy as well. If she was capable of tearing durasteel to create a stairway for herself, there was nothing saying she could not fake injuries more severe than they felt but…

He wanted to believe her.

He wanted to believe that he had been saved for a purpose. He wanted to believe that she had done these things for him, for the Rebellion, for everyone of Rogue One because of some great destiny, something powerful and wonderful that she had seen in him and in them, but the cynical part of him just could not let it go. Not yet.

“Time to go. She’s hit the alert, she’s getting ready to leave with her…harem.”

There was an utterly unmistakable snarl in her voice at the word “harem”, and there was thunder in the air around her. A shimmer started forming in the air around her, and Cassian pressed himself against the furthest back wall, eyes wide.

It was a good choice.

The door Phrim was pressed against groaned, and then with a shriek, flew away from her, ripping out of the masonry that had, up until exceptionally recently, held it in place. Completely nonplussed, Phrim took a step forward, walking out of their cell, and then turned her head back towards Cassian.

“Come on.”

He hesitated, but she did not. Phrim moved on, heading out into the hallway, her lack of eyes making her emotions inscrutable. Cassian took a long, deep breath, trying to focus his nerves. This was so much more than what he had expected. But he could not stay behind. If he stayed behind, he would die. He followed.

She cut a path through the hallway, debris moving from her path as she walked. It did not seem to be a conscious decision to move it, just the mere fact of her existence and her mood was forcing the world around them to move. The Force was a terrifying thing. And from how Phrim looked, shoulders back, head high, and the air trembling to feel her passing through it, Cassian did not know just what he should expect from whatever was happening next.

There was silence around them, a quiet that permeated his very bones and made him ache to hear the sound of another.

Confidently, Phrim walked forward, through the hallways twisting and turning, not pausing for a moment to consider where she was going or what direction was the correct one. Cassian had, of course, been tracking the way through this mostly underground place as he had been dragged around, to the absolute best of his ability. Phrim clearly had done the same.

How much longer she had been there than he had been, he had not asked, but…it had to have been longer than expected if she was moving so confidently.

A twi’lek man stepped out from around the corner they were approaching, a guard of some sort, but not one Cassian could ever remember having had seen. Before the twi’lek could even bring his eyes up to look at the two of them, he stiffened and slumped. Phrim’s hand came up. The Force caught the twi’lek before he hit the ground, cushioning him and muffling any sound. It was disconcerting.

The twi’lek hadn’t even had the chance to try and defend himself. Phrim had acted before a threat could be established. Quick, efficient, brutal in a way Cassian could not be. Could never be. And he was still not sure if that was something that was attractive or terrifying or some cloying mixture of both.

Claxons went off, and Phrim flinched, reaching up to rub one of her ears with the heel of her palm. The closest speaker squealing the alarm exploded.

Cassian did not know if he would ever be used to seeing that. Phrim, used to her own power, and wearing this mantle of extraneous ability did not even pause in her walk. People began rushing past them, racing towards exits. No one seemed to care about them being prisoners, or even really notice them. Whatever it was that Phrim was doing was keeping the eyes of others off of them.

That, or the alarm that was blaring was truly something rare and they were well and truly panicked.

No one was shouting anything, it was a decidedly businesslike evacuation of everyone who was not in a cell.

Phrim darted off into a side hallway, clearly intent on somewhere else than where those who were definitely heading towards the exit. Cassian was certain they were going the wrong way for the exit, but Phrim waved him along after her, and it did not seem like there was going to be any interference from any of the people hustling to escape.

She walked with confidence and when he opened his mouth to question her, she held up a hand.

 _Quiet, now, please. Weapons,_ her voice whispered in his mind. _I promised to protect you, but it will be easier if you are armed. The store-room where your things were taken. It is this way._

Cassian blinked, and looked over her shoulder, down the expanse of the empty, and featureless hallway they were standing in.

_~What?_

His response came naturally, bubbling up out of him, reaching for the bond in the Force that connected the both of them. His thoughts flew away from him, whisked into an echoing strand of thought that vibrated like a plucked string.

_Oh you found your voice, excellent Cassian. That makes it easier when I can hear you properly._

Phrim grinned at him, tilting her head at him. He tried to deny the way her chest grew warm when he spoke to her, and the way his chest heated in response. She felt warmth for him, and in this mind-to-mind talk, there was no way to hide that emotion.

_~What?!_

_You’ve learned, that is all. It is new, I know. But this is a good way to talk._

Her voice was soothing, and carried much the same tone of her speaking voice, but there was something _more_ to it. She spoke and there were echoes of pride and watching the other younger Miraluka find their own voices, reaching into the Force and starting to communicate with the rest of the world at large. There was a smile in her voice that he felt echo all the way through him. He did not need to look at her to know she was happy.

 _This way_.

He saw the door she was heading for, and knew roughly where it was, even. That the hallway they were in would shortly take a sharp right turn and there would be a door that she was going to just tear apart and that would be the end of it. He would have his weapons back, or someone’s weapons. It wouldn’t matter. He would be armed.

There was a sense that Phrim was hoping to also be armed, but before he could make too much sense of what it was she was looking for, the connection cut out abruptly, and he felt her frown.

_~Why?_

He could not manage complex sentences, not yet, but he still felt the depth of his question leave him, add nuance to what it was that his one-word question wanted to know of Phrim.

_It is not for you to know. Your mind cannot shield itself, cannot stop the knowledge from leaking forth. Please. Trust._

And there were no other images that accompanied her words this time, only the static image of where they were going as she pushed forward. He followed behind, the sounds of fleeing people from behind them fading as they wound their way down the long hallway. Phrim seemed confident, and Cassian trusted that she knew where she was going now. Not all of his questions had been answered, not all of his worries allayed, but Phrim was confident, and so was he. He had to be.

The door came up, exactly as he had seen it in the bond the two of them shared, after a rightward curve and, just as she had shown him, she tore the door off its hinges. A new alarm added to the cacophony of wailing, but neither of them paid it much, if any mind. No one would come to investigate this in the middle of the entirety of their world already screaming.

Phrim tilted her head, inviting him to investigate. Cassian did not need telling twice. He rushed into the storeroom, eyes casting around a veritable arsenal of weapons and armor, looking for whatever of his he could recover, or what new things he could take.

His belt was gone – well, the belt Phrim had taken after their torrid night in his U-wing was gone. That was expected, the call to the Rebellion could not have gone out if that had been left behind. But there were plenty of weapons he could pick from. Part of him very much wanted to take the big weapons, the ones he could be certain he could use easily and without any hesitation.

The room was over-full of pilfered items, bursting at the seams with clothes, weapons, and armor. It was a magpie’s nest of collected pieces of other people’s power. If Cassian could bring one tenth of the weapons here back to the Rebellion, it would be more than enough to fund or arm a more dangerous mission twice over. Guns were stacked all along one wall, personalized weapons that bore their old owner’s talismans and markings. Clothes were shoved, haphazardly into boxes and strewn across shelves. There was no organization other than an amorphous sort of mess that vaguely represented how long this charnel house of horrors had been standing.

To his surprise, Phrim entered the room behind him, stepping in behind Cassian, reaching a hand out, searching for something. She did not find it, and her hand dropped. A look of concern, or maybe it was sadness, even, crossed her face. Cassian instinctively ached to help her, to give her comfort when she lacked whatever it was that she was expecting. But he did not move forward, and neither did she.

Briefly, the thought of them, tangled together, amongst the wreckages of the lives of others entered his mind. Her, naked and bleeding, pressed up against the shelves, with her head thrown back and hair mussed, his teeth set into the deep wound on her shoulder and cock buried inside of her. Cassian found himself taking a step towards her before he could even really consider the entirety of the thought.

_Not now, but soon. Soon. Darling soon._

An image rose up in the back of his mind, Phrim, with her arms tied behind her back, face pressed against one of the shelves, pants around her knees, him thrusting into her with wild abandon. He could _feel_ her, slick and wet and open around his cock, like it was actually happening right in this moment. Cassian had to grab for the closest thing to keep himself upright as the sensations overwhelmed him.

 _~Feels good_.

His responses were still far from coherent enough, especially now that he could feel his pulse in his ears and his body singing for the touch of his…whatever Phrim was to him.

_Yes, and after, it will still feel good. Focus._

Cassian took a deep breath and went back to weapon selection. He did have work to do, and that work involved being safe when the Rebellion showed up to collect him, or at the very least come to check out just what this place was and why his distress signal had gone out after he had been dark for too long. That was assuming they were the reason for the alarms and everything happening as it was right now. It could be any other reason as well, and Cassian did not want to let his hopes soar too high but –

_~Wait. How…fly?_

A jumbled image of what he remembered of the last of Scarif hovered in the air between them, and he saw Phrim grinning and waving a hand in front of her empty eye sockets.

 _One learns many things very quickly when one is trained as I am_.

There was a tipping vastness that opened under his feet, the sensation of falling, but feeling safe while doing so, an image of a younger Phrim falling from a drop ship, the sensation of confidence and power emanating from somewhere in his chest. It was not an answer that really made him understand just how it was that Phrim managed to pilot a ship into a war zone as aggressive as Scarif, with the wave of destruction of the Death Star wrought upon the dying planet without dying or losing her ship, but…

There was something there. Not necessarily what he had asked for, but he still had learned something of Phrim, something new about her, something about her past and history, a tantalizing clue to who this woman was outside of his knowledge of her. She had a whole life outside of this moment, and her entire life had lead to this moment and he…just stared at her.

Bleeding, hurt, bearing more pain than he could think possible, she grinned at him. Someone who had done so much, impossible things, actions that would be a single person’s most heroic moment, and done it time and time and time again. She still grinned through the pain, disregarding all that she had been through, just to offer him a smile again. Cassian did not know what to do, faced with this.

So he went back to looking for a blaster, grabbing a holster and its matching blaster but a few moments later and buckling them in place. He grabbed a spare, kept it in his hand, and slung a rather shockingly handy bandolier of grenades over his shoulder.

_~You?_

She was unarmed, standing there, waiting for him to be done. No armor, no new armament, nothing. She had not even reached for any of the purloined clothes to redress herself. Apparently, she was fine in the scraps she was wearing and needed nothing more. Armor would at least come close to helping, he thought, but then he remembered the moment in the brothel, where she had held a bolt in midair, and then in the alleys as he and his people had been fleeing for a ship, and she had provided covering fire alone and...Cassian realized he rather wanted her to walk out of here with an entire arsenal.

_No, what I want is not here. Jheza has it._

There was a tone of resignation, a sadness that echoed through his chest. Regret. Loss. Longing. Something had been taken that can never be replaced, and a growing realization that there is little, if anything you could ever do to recover it, and the sort of resignation that came with that.

Phrim was made of pain, crafted out of it like other beautiful beings were crafted of marble or glass. Pain was cleaved to her. Irrevocably part of her.

He wanted to offer comfort, but as soon as he had his chosen weapons in-hand, she was turning away, sending an image of where they would go next, back down the now emptier hallway that the rest of the people had been evacuating down, towards the exit, into blessed, glorious light once again.

_~Comfort?_

How was he to ask for more clarity in these things, when he was still fumbling with the bond that connected the two of them and learning how the Force actually could be used to communicate? It was an entirely new language, something he had never had to really learn, and he was getting a crash course in it in absolutely the worst circumstances. He could work on communicating better later on.

There would be a later on. He was confident in that. He had to be. This was not the end.

_I am hurt. It all hurts. But it will pass. It must._

_~What if no?_

_Then I suffer._

The answer did not satisfy him, and only begged that he ask another dozen more, but she was intently striding forward, muscles of her back held tight and taught as she pushed them towards whatever it was that awaited them outside.

A majority of the people had already left, and only stragglers remained in the hallway as they moved towards the exit. No one spoke out to try and stop them. Cassian expected some manner of resistance, but he could not deny that he probably would have done the same if he had seen someone like Phrim stalking down the halls. She emanated an aura, intentional or not, of someone who would absolutely annihilate him given any chance, choice, or opportunity.

They moved together as one, racing down the hallway towards what was, hopefully, freedom. The door in front of them had blazing sunlight streaming through the cracks around the metal that formed it. It had been malformed, pushed open too many times, and too harshly. It swung open on squealing hinges.

Outside, the world was chaos.

Ships were taking off, frantically, into uncleared airspace. Men, women, and all in between of a dozen different species raced across the landing pads, carrying crates in some cases, but in most, just racing for what was hopefully safety from whatever it was that they thought was coming for them. Cassian blinked spots out of his eyes, raising a hand to shield his eyes in a vain attempt to try and see anything in more detail.

Phrim did not seem to be bothered in the slightest, striding quickly out into the over-bright light, breaking out into a job as soon as she saw what it was she was looking for.

Or rather, who.

“ _Jheza!_ ”   
_Beloved, please! Please, hear me out, my love_.

Cassian’s eyes cleared enough to see the other Miraluka, who had been hustling towards one of the largest ships still remaining behind, stop and turn. Phrim seemed relieved, her hand dropping down.

“What?”  
_Why would you stop me, I must leave_ , _there is nothing for me here, you have ruined it all._

Cassian was ridden on waves of emotion that were not his own, but it seemed once the path between them was open, it was not so easily closed.

Jheza drew away when Phrim came closer, clutching a bundle to her chest. Phrim knew what it was.

“Those, please.”  
_The Sene gave them to me. You know I was sent. A mission. I must have them. Please, love_.

Jheza shook her head, holding the bundle tighter to her chest, turning her face away from Phrim.

“NO!”  
_All I have left, all I am allowed, come with me if you want them._

Phrim’s shoulders dropped, disappointment radiating off of her. This could not be easy, it could not go smoothly, she could not simply wipe away what had happened in the pursuit of what she wanted. This would be a struggle.

“Jheza.”  
_Beloved. You know I cannot go with you. Even fallen, I cannot go with you. Take what it is. All of it. Know I love you. Go from me. We cannot meet again._

This time it was Jheza who looked startled, drawing up to her full height before walking closer to Phrim. Phrim did not move, only watched, carefully. No one seemed intent upon bothering them, no one seemed like they even noticed the two Miraluka moving closer together by fractions until Jheza was well within Phrim’s personal space.

“Accepted,” Phrim whispered, voice hoarse and cracking.   
_If it is ending like this. Be quick, love. I will not stop your hand. Be true. Strike swiftly. You know the way._

One of Jheza’s hands wrapped around the hilt of Phrim’s lightsaber, the emitter pointed directly at Phrim’s heart. It was a threat, and Phrim knew that Jheza meant it as one. Jheza could kill her right now, and it would be effortless.

Phrim was not going to defend herself. She was too close to do anything of use, save to take her lightsaber back, and she was not going to do that. Not right now.

“Why?” Jheza sobbed, looking up at Phrim, her fingers hovering over the activator switch.  
_Did not speak for me then, willing to die for me now? Now? Of all times, you would make this now?_

“Jheza,” was the only thing Phrim could say, reaching out to gently brush hair out of Jheza’s face. She still did not reach for the lightsaber, knowing and trusting that Jheza could kill her at any moment.   
_Beloved, my beloved, I chased you across the stars. I would not end you now. I could not._

Jheza leaned into Phrim’s touch, pressing her cheek to Phrim’s palm with a pained whimper.

The moment between them hung in the balance of many things. The Force, their relationship, all they had been through and everything that stretched between them was on a terrible and awe-inspiring. Neither of them moved, too consumed with the feelings that passed between them and what it could all mean in tandem. They drowned in the moment, together.

Everything bad between them, all the terror and the hate and the desperate unflinching maddening love, it flowed through the mental bond Phrim had opened with Cassian, and he felt all of it. Tears streaked down his face unchecked, and a sorrow blistered his very being. There was love here, and it was tainted. A horrid thing, a twisting of what was into what it is now, and Cassian wept for it all.

Both Miraluka stood as they were, the threat hovering in between them, the acceptance of the threat and the great wide nothingness done about it. Cassian could not know what it was that was passing between them in that moment, the connection that Phrim had fostered had gone dark as soon as he felt the touch of sorrow in his chest. Apparently enough of what he had been feeling had leaked back to Phrim and she had cut him out.

The two Miraluka held each other, gently, carefully, delicately. They were bastions of stillness and silence in the cacophony around them. Jheza did not ignite the saber, but she did not take her hand off of the switch either. The threat did not vanish, and Phrim did not pull away. If this was the end, she had come to terms with that, but for now, in this moment, she had Jheza in her arms again and there was an overwhelming sense of right-ness to that that she did not want to be parted from.

A heavy blaster fired.

Jheza, darling beloved, monstrous and fierce gave a single sharp sigh.

The hiss of blaster bolt fizzing out on the heavy cortosis-weave of her jacket and the acrid smell of burning flesh hit her nose, and Phrim nearly recoiled.

Only nearly because Jheza was slumping forward into her arms, and Phrim had to move quickly to catch her.

**_NO!_ **

The shout drove Cassian to his knees, clutching at his head.

_Jheza, no, not like this!_

Phrim dropped to her knees, cradling Jheza. Two lightsabers clattered to the ground and Jheza went limp. There were whispers in the Force, the last echoes of Jheza emanating outward. There was a fist-sized hole through the left side of Jheza’s chest, smoking slightly. Phrim did not try and press her hands to the hole, she knew it was over, that whatever there remained of Jheza was quickly fading away.

The brown coat Phrim had worn for so long had a massive discolored spot on it from where the blaster bolt that had killed Jheza  had shorted out against the cortosis weave. It had saved Phrim, but doomed Jheza.

“No, no, no, Jheza, no, not like this, come on,” Phrim whimpered, clutching Jheza to her chest.

With the last of her strength, Jheza reached up and cradled Phrim’s cheek in her hand. There was a silence that expanded beyond the two of them as Phrim held on to her. Sobbing brokenly, Phrim bowed her head, waiting for the moment when Jheza’s last echo left the Force.

 _Love…you_.

A moment of silence passed through Phrim as Jheza died.

And then.

Then there was –

Phrim _roared_. The air around her shimmered with the Force. Small stones levitated into the air around her, and the horrible sound of loss that ripped out of her chest made Cassian’s heart stop. The fleeing men and women stopped, even, their attention drawn back to Phrim in this moment as her sorrow tore at the fabric of the world.

Her rage, her sorrow, all of it blended together into one primal scream of denial.

The scream lasted for as long as Phrim had breath in her lungs and when it finally tapered off, when she had to take another deep breath in, when Cassian finally felt like _he_ could breathe again, that was when she finally moved.

The Force whirled in the air around her, her cloak slipping onto her body, both lightsabers snapping to her hands. They ignited with a loud snap- _hiss_ and the world devolved to chaos.

Some unfortunate opened fire on Phrim, and with an easy grace that belied how much training must have gone into the movement, she deflected the bolt back to them, ending their life with brutal efficiency. Her fingers fanned out from her right lightsaber, and one of the huge durasteel crates that had been abandoned as the evacuation went on lifted into the air.

She flung the crate at a group of onrushing attackers, flattening them where they stood. A barrage of blaster fire rained down upon her and Phrim turned into it, the bolts fizzing out on her cloak before her turn evolved into a spin, and one of the lightsabers flew from her hand, a javelin of unstoppable force that wove into a group of fighters, decimating them before returning to Phrim.

Easily, she caught the lightsaber, turning it around her hand to deflect the next onslaught of blaster fire.

The dance of savagery moved through her, and around her, demanding the entire world pay attention to what she was doing and witness her sorrow and fury.

Those that remained to fight suddenly seemed less and less confident of their abilities to stop this dervish of a woman, who battled with two lightsabers and utilized the Force with an ease that none of them had ever witnessed in the middle of a firefight. They fled to their ships, abandoning the bodies of those that they had left behind.

Save one.

A high whine heralded another massive blaster bolt, the same that had ended Jheza’s life. Phrim brought her sabers up to deflect the heavy bolt. She was knocked back, staggered by the impact, but uninjured. The man who had shot Jheza in the back, the man responsible for her loss looked at her from behind the scope of his huge blaster.

She had no eyes to meet his with, but it was unmistakable.

She had seen him. He had seen her. The air around her was shimmering, as if filled with a thousand glittering knife-blades. Her shoulders tensed, her back straightened and she squared herself to the man. There were no words between them, just a rage that clawed at the edges of Cassian’s vision.

The man held his position for a heartbeat, staring down Phrim, finger on the trigger.  He let loose a firestorm from the blaster, scorching the air and earth around her.

Then he ran.

Bolting for a ship, one of the few ones remaining, he raced away, trying to outrun whatever it was that was going to come up after him. He got up the ramp, it closed behind him, sealing shut. Out of the smoke of the burning ground rose Phrim, her coat discolored in more places than it bore its original coloration now. Her lightsabers were slicing up through the dust, illuminating the cloud she stood in.

The man’s ship began to rise, boosters firing and beginning the laborious process of getting it in the air.

Phrim was obviously groggy, injured despite her cloak’s dispersal of the heavy blaster fire. She looked up to the fleeing ship, her shoulders sagging as the ship slowly, laboriously made its way skyward.

The lightsabers flickered off, and for a moment, the battlefield was silent. No great power hummed around her any longer. It was just a desolate warzone, littered with bodies and shrapnel and a single standing warrior in front of the body of their beloved.

She put her lightsabers away, clipping them to the back of her belt, resigned, apparently, to the escape of the man who had killed Jheza. Cassian struggled to his feet, looking away from the carnage, trying to catch his breath, trying to figure out what words he was going to try and use in order to offer Phrim any sort of comfort but –

All of the air around him began to hum. Slowly, he turned his attention back to Phrim, who was standing where she had been, hands outstretched towards the slowly moving craft. The crates that remained behind rattled as the humming grew louder. The ship seemed to stall in the air, waiting, perhaps for the guns on the ship to be ready.

Or at least, that was what Cassian thought until he heard the high whine of an engine in distress. He looked carefully to the ship and saw that the engines were roaring at full speed, but the ship was going nowhere. He blinked, trying to parse just what it was that he was seeing.

Phrim screamed, a full-bodied howl that ripped out of her chest, and _pulled_.

The ship tumbled out of the air, engines screeching ungodly loud as it cartwheeled into the ground. She tore the ship out of the sky, pinning it to the ground with a wrenching movement. She rushed the ship, running forward even as it burst into fire and smoke.

She tore through the durasteel hull with her bare hands, the Force assisting her, pulling the ship to pieces, warping the air around her to keep her safe from any further harm.

Cassian could only watch as Phrim tore into the cockpit, wreathed in flame and smoke, to tear the man out of the safety provided by his ship. The Force pulled him up to her outstretched hand. Her fingers wrapped around his throat.

“No Force, not for _this_ ,” she snarled, her voice carrying, overloud and booming.

Rage and pain and horrifying fury wrapped themselves around Phrim like a cloak and she lifted him over her head.

He kicked at her weakly, trying to dislodge her grip on his throat. She took a kick square to the chin without flinching, her hand tightening on his neck. The fires that surrounded her burned brighter and brighter as she held him aloft, uncaring of the heat, uncaring of the discomfort. There was no mercy in her. No softness. No gentleness. He had killed the one she loved, and she was going to have _revenge_.

Phrim held him in place until he stopped moving, until his legs stopped their futile kicking, until his hands dropped away from her arm, until the fire around them burned hot enough to threaten even Phrim’s ability to withstand it.

It was only then that she moved, throwing the body away from her and staggering out of the smoking wreckage, back towards Jheza’s broken body.

She collapsed at the side of her beloved, a keening wail ripping out of her. There was no consoling her. Sorrow ruined her. The world around her burned and Cassian could only watch. He did not want to get closer to Phrim, not just then. She was rocked by the intensity of her feelings, cradling Jheza’s body to her chest, screaming her denial of what happened, howling the injustice of it all to the uncaring and burning world around her.

The rest of the people who had been responsible for what had happened, those ridden by Jheza’s power and fury themselves, they were all gone. It was only Cassian and Phrim now, standing in the middle of a ruined battlefield as ships and crates and bodies burned.

The Rebellion found them as they were a half hour later, a U-wing dropping down out of the sky, the bay door opening.

Phrim was still howling her sorrow to the world around her, her voice cracking and raw. Everything in her hurt, and Cassian ached for her.

But the ship was here and he was not going to leave her behind.

“Phrim…Phrim, please. It’s time to get up and go. Come on,” he said softly, approaching her carefully, holding a hand out to stop the medic from the U-Wing from coming closer.

She looked up to him, her face stained with soot, and streaked with tears.

“I…I can’t leave her, Cassian.”

“Then she comes with us,” he said, kneeling down next to her. “But we have to go, now.”


	10. First Change (Start Again)

The flight back to base was a long one. Cassian did not want to leave Phrim’s side, but Phrim was unmoved from where she was, next to Jheza’s body and he had so many reports to make. So many things to say, updates to give, reports to file, all things he needed to do, things that were expected of him, even as medics tended to him.

He wanted to help Phrim, wanted to comfort her, but he had a job to do.

She stayed by Jheza’s side, cupping the cold, stiffening hand in her own. There were no tears, and her wailing had subsided to a quieter half-song. The Force hummed around her as she did so. The mourning period for Miraluka was long and complicated but that was only planetside, where there were hundreds of people who had _felt_ you in the Force and mourned the loss…

Alone, out in the great wide emptiness of space, it was just the two of them.

So Phrim mourned alone.

No one joined their voice to hers, and even if she was planetside, she was certain she would sing along. She loved Jheza. That was her flaw. That was why she would never go home again, that was why she was _alone_ now. Because of her love, because of her mindless, beautiful, desperate love, she was alone in the great wide universe. All alone.

Until now, she had been alone, but known Kheza was out there, been trying to g et back to her, trying to save her love, and now?

Nothing.

Bitter the pill of the exile. Lonely the path.

She couldn’t have it any other way. She wouldn’t have it any other way. This was what she chose the moment that she left orbit of her home planet. This was what she did _to herself_ to follow the one she loved across the stars.

If you had asked her then, what she had hoped to accomplish, surely she would have had an answer.

Now?

No. No answers, only silence.

The unimaginable silence of space and emptiness around her. Nothingness. She would feel alone if she had not succumbed to her loneliness already.

No one, barring Cassian understood her on this ship. She was alien to them, a woman beaten and bloodied, in tattered clothes, clutching a dead body, two lightsabers, and two cloaks. A sad, sorry state to see any alien in, and Phrim really wished she could bring herself to care about decorum or what others thought of her in that moment, because all she wanted to do was crawl inside a small hole and wish the world away.

If she had her way, she would be back _home_ , with her family. Her parents. Her siblings. Her team. Everyone she knew and loved and left for Jheza. And Jheza would be there too. They would be together, the fated pair that should have always been. Instead of this.

Instead of a cold body on a colder slab in the cold, dark expanse of space.

Phrim knew the words, knew the power that would undo Jheza’s body and let her return to the Living Force That Surrounds them. She just…hesitated. She knew what she should do, what she could do, and what she would do, but she was stuck, in that moment, looking at the body of the woman she loved. Frozen in indecision, all she could think to do was reach out and hold Jheza’s hand. Someone had to remember her, someone had to care about her, and the longer Phrim sat there, kneeling on the cold floor as a ship moved them through space and time, the more she realized…

She wasn’t certain she could do that for Jheza.

For Kelahna.

She couldn’t keep calling Kelahna her _Beloved_ when Kelahna was dead. When Kelahna was stained red to the elbow in the blood of innocents.

Phrim could not save the dead. She could not bring Kelahna back. And if she did, what would it be? What good would come from bringing Kelahna back in the Force? In remembering her, Phrim would have to stare the specter of everything she had _done_ down and still say Kelahna had deserved to live better than she had.

Could she do that?

Her love had sent her to fighting pits night after night, for no reason except her own broken entertainment. Her love had brutalized people, using the Force as a bludgeoning weapon to hurt them. Her love had done _horrible_ things in the name of her own selfish desires, and Phrim had not been strong enough to stop her. Her weakness had propagated pain. Her hesitating when she had first seen Kelahna had made it so Kelahna could hurt so many other people.

Like Cassian.

And Phrim felt bad about that. It cut her to the core that she had betrayed a trust without meaning to and that burned her. If she had been stronger, Cassian would have never been in that situation. If she had been stronger, different, more like what she _should_ have been, and less like what she _was_ , none of **this** would have happened.

For good or ill.

The…thoughts were hard to get through, but throughout it all, she did not let go of Kelahna’s hand. Her love had gotten her to leave the comfort of her home, the duty of what she had been born to do, and the end result was this.

A dead body on a ship hurtling through space to an unknown location.

Her own body, broken and hurt in so many places that Phrim knew would leave her with scars that would forever remind her just what her stupidity and _love_ had wrought upon the world.

There were better uses of her power, better places for her to be than out in this great wide empty expanse of the universe at large. She could have stayed home, could have led her people to their next golden age, could have done so much more with her life. But no.

She was here.

She had abandoned everything for Kelahna. And why? Why had she left home, why had she left everything she cared for, everything she had worked for, if this was the end result?

Had she known that this adventure would end where she was now, would she have still left?

Phrim exhaled slowly. This would be something that she had to work with, to deal with, to do everything in her power to understand for a long, long time. There were no easy answers here. No, there was only pain. So, so much pain. Unanswered questions and pain.

Life was never going to be easy, that was not in the cards for her, she knew that from the very beginning. Phrim had always had a call to a life of service, had always been meant for _more_ , for the glory of –

By Ashla and Bogan it didn’t matter.

None of it mattered anymore.

Kelahna was dead. She was dead and gone. There was no point in thinking about what should have, or could have been. There was only what _is_. And what is, in this moment, what had been, what would be, none of it really…

Phrim sighed, and leaned forward, pressing her forehead to the cold durasteel slab that Kelahna was lying upon. The great and terrible calm had stolen over her now. Acceptance, true and all-the-way-through acceptance, was a long, long way off. Right now, Phrim just wanted it to hurt a little bitt less. It could hurt a lot for a long, long while, but she needed some breathing room from the trauma.

She should let Kelahna go.

She didn’t want to.

Her heart broke.

Carefully, delicately, she pressed her lips to the back of Kelahna’s hand, and bid her love goodbye.

Kelahna went into the Force, a whisper hovering in the air behind her. If Phrim wanted to, she could lean in and listen to the final moments of her love. She didn’t.

Whatever last bit of Kelahna lingered, Phrim released to the Force. There was nothing but pain in what had once been a relationship she thought could have lasted forever, been writ to the stars, been _everything_ to her. Holding onto any of it would only poison her.

Miraluka could not cry.

But Phrim sat, next to an empty bed, leaning up against the metal as if it were the only thing holding her up and let her sadness wash over her.

She closed off her senses to the world around her, letting only the barest trickle of information seep in from the world around her. She needed the silence, needed the quietude and the offering of the time to just…be herself. Not a hero, not a Miraluka, not Of the Sene, not anything but a woman who had lost someone she had loved.

When had she lost Kelahna?

Was it when Kelahna had been thrown off planet, exiled for what she had been, for the growing, gnawing darkness in her lover that not even Phrim, with all her power, could abate?

Was it when she first saw Kelahna after chasing her across the stars, only for her love to laugh and leave her behind in favor of…whatever it was she had with the people who had been running that horrific scheme of brutality, weapons and drugs?

Was it when she found Cassian and felt, for the first time in a long time, what she had first felt back home?

Was it just now, when Kelahna went into the Force and Phrim took none of her love back into her, to preserve and be remembered, as was the tradition?

Because whenever it was that she had lost Kelahna, she was gone. Gone completely. Erased. No Miraluka back home would remember Kelahna – and none would remember her, either. She could have kept her alive for a bit longer, could have…

Could have done something to keep someone who had done nothing but hurt her alive a little bit longer

This entire situation was fucked.

Phrim knew that.

It still hurt.

She still was mourning.

A broken sigh spilled out of her mouth. This hurt.

* * *

The ship touched down on Yavin hours later. The lack of a body where they had been one was met with stony silence from Phrim. She did not answer, she merely bundled Kelahna’s clothes and nodded towards Cassian as thanks.

If she tried to speak, she would break down. So she simply did not speak, just waited for someone to tell her where to go, what to do. Her sorrow was blinding, and she really could not be blamed for not wanting to talk to all these people – all these new people.

So many people.

“Phrim, hey, Phrim, this way, c’mon,” she heard.

Cassian. She knew Cassian’s voice. She nodded, mutely, not looking up. She did not need to look up or turn her head to see anything, but with so much of her attention somewhere else, it didn’t matter. She followed, mutely, behind him, not caring to move away when he put a hand on the small of her back and guided her through the hustle and bustle of the Rebel base. Really, she knew she should pay attention, but she was clutching Kelahna’s bloodstained and torn clothes in her arms, along with both of the cloaks.

Idly, her brain reminded her that she had one last thing she could do before she could count herself well and truly done with all of this. She needed to find –

“Later, Phrim. Later. Right now you need a shower and sleep. C’mon, we’re almost there.”

She nodded along, not capable of mustering any meaningful response.

He opened a door, she felt the air shift and heard the clicking of it, and the same sound after he pulled her through. Carefully, he put his hands over hers, taking what she was holding and putting it to the side. Cassian took her hands in his, and pressed a kiss to her busted knuckles.

“We’ll get you bacta afterwards. I have someone coming.”

Phrim nodded, numb to everything else.

Cassian undressed her, carefully avoiding all of the wounds he knew were lacing across her body. She leaned against him, resting her weight wherever she could. Exhaustion had come to her, putting it’s hand on the back of her neck and dragging her down now. She was…so tired. So, so tired. Everything in her was tired.

He stood next to her in the sonic, holding her up when her body got overwhelmed. The sonic stung her broken skin, and beat mercilessly on her bruises. She was just too tired to move out of the way of the more painful blasts, and she was thankful for Cassian’s presence.

She would ask about why he had done this later. Right now, he was draping a blanket around her shoulders and letting her fall into the small bunk to the side of the room. He didn’t get into bed with her, just pulled up a chair next to her and stood guard.

Phrim didn’t know if he knew how comforting that was, or if he was even doing it intentionally, but with a soft sigh, she fell into blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

Miraluka do not dream.

Not really.

The Force around them, even in passive sensing, was too much to allow for much in the way humans considered “dreaming”. They did, however, tend towards Force-Sight manipulations, where they saw, perhaps, a little too far beyond the Veil between the worlds.

Phrim saw nothing.

Only darkness.

A million shards of a trillion broken mirrors – objects she had never looked into, only heard of, mythic things that would show her _who she was_ , splintered in the air around her. Tantalizing whispers of a thousand, thousand, thousand possibilities that hovered just out of reach and begged for her to reach out and cut her palms on.

Darkness.

Splintered realities, a billion different possibilities spiderwebbing from every moment in her life. Every decision shaping the world around her in ways more profound than she understood. Everything she had ever done, reflected back at her in ghostly, terrifying relief as she slept.

Many would find the –

Darkness.

Uncomfortable, especially given how easily the others of the universe at large considered one part of the Force to be _Good_ while the other side was **Bad**. But Phrim had known –

Darkness.

For a very long time. She had felt it in her love, felt it in the world around her, even back home, and had known that something of it lived in her. It lived in everyone. The Force was in all things, and the Force was _Good_ and the Force was **Bad** and the Force defied any real way to constrain it to being one or the other in any singular moment.

The Force **_was_**.

And in –

Darkness.

Phrim found peace.

In her mind, she stood, cloaked in shadows, and watched as the Light flickered around her, reflecting off of all things she had experienced, everything she had accomplished…and the ripples it had had in the world. Her passion could sunder mountains, lay empires low…

Save lives.

Alter the course of history.

Preserve a rebellion.

Her passion, her drive, her focus, her rage, all of it – it was good and bad. It was both. It was the Force. It acted in her, through her, around her. She was as beholden to its whims as much as any other Miraluka could be. Which was, to say, a lot. Her life bled through the Force. Her life touched the Force, and the Force touched her.

The loss of Kelahna was…hard. A scar on her heart, and through her body. Healing would take a very, very long time, if it every fully happened.

But the –

Darkness.

And the comfort of the quietude. And the splinters of Light. And the echoes of what she had done all around her helped her.

She drifted for a long, long time.

* * *

Phrim came back to consciousness slowly, the Darkness slowly peeling away from her. In pieces, she became aware of her body once again. The coolness of the air. The soft roughness of the blanket – a blanket that had been rough, and worn smooth by time and pressure. The feeling of clothes on her body, the recognition that she had been dressed, or gotten dressed in a fugue state she could not remember. The subtle, soft smell of ozone – typical of…

Ah right.

She was at the Rebellion base.

She sat up, noting the pain in her back and down her legs. There was a pulling across her skin, over the wounds she had…earned under Kelahna’s hand. Bacta-patches smelled sweet, slightly sickly, but heavy with the scent of her own blood in it. Grunting, she carefully ran her hand over the patch on her ribs. It was fresh.

Someone had been taking care of her. The thought comforted her. Slowly, she expanded her consciousness outwards, opening her Force-Sight to the world around her, letting herself “open her eyes”.

There was a man sitting next to her, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

Phrim reached up, feeling to see if her mask was on her face. She wasn’t surprised to feel it missing. With everything it had been through, she would not have been surprised if it had just been thrown out, unsalvageable in any way, shape, or form. If she had had any greater amount of care in her to really muster to _feel_ anything about it, she could have missed those beads, and the familiar, well-worn weight of it.

Later.

“Hello?” she offered, gently, trying to suss out just what sort of person this was.

Her Force-Sight washed over him, expanding outwards to where it normally lay. There was just this man, and her. The shape and form of the room she was in came into relief and she was…relieved? Sad? To see that she was still in Cassian’s room. Or, at least, she was still in the room Cassian had first brought her into.

“You’re strong in the Force?”

“I’m Miraluka,” she said, the only response she could muster in that moment, swinging her legs out of her bed and facing the man.

“I feel you, right now. Looking at me.”

“No eyes.”

She waved a hand in front of her face.

He laughed, a dry little self-deprecating chuckle. She felt something in the air around him, and not wanting to be rude, she did not look deeper. Things were different with people who were not Miraluka, and she was in a base full of people with a lot of weapons, and even if she had both of her lightsabers back now, it wasn’t really a smart idea to upset whoever it was who had been put in charge of watching over her when Cassian wasn’t around.

“Yes, sorry, sorry. I just have never…really met anyone else who could do that with the Force. My Master, he just died and – “

“Master?”

“My teacher, didn’t you have one?”

“Many. Many, many teachers. All the time, back home.”

He smiled and she couldn’t _help_ but feel the Force around him light up. Brilliant white and gold flickering around his body. He was strong. Untrained, but strong. And _vibrant_ in a way she had not really come across in non-Miraluka. Phrim felt a smile come to her face in response. Tired, hurt, but…still a teacher.

“Who are you?” she asked, quietly.

“Oh, my name’s Luke Skywalker,” he said cheerily.

“Phrim is my name. Or close enough,” she said, letting her Force-presence bleed through her words.

He rocked back a bit, feeling in the Force and all around him, what her name was, what her name meant to her, and who she was.

“I’m…sorry for your loss. Cassian told us something of what happened, but I do not think that I will ever really understand what it is that you went through. I feel it when you speak, the loss that echoes in you…I’m sorry. I lost my Uncle and Aunt recently, and I know it’s not the same.”

Phrim inclined her head gracefully, silently thanking Luke for the offering of condolence. She knew he meant it, she could feel his sincerity in the Force. He was not offering this out of some sense of need, but out of genuine concern for her. That was…touching. He barely knew her, hardly at all, but he felt for her.

“Why are you here?” Phrim asked, and then corrected herself, realizing that she was only speaking and not _communicating_. “Not with the Rebellion, I mean, in this room. Watching me sleep.”

“Oh. Uh, I was asked to be on watch. The Force-stuff you were doing was giving a lot of people headaches when they got too close, so Chirrut, Han, Cassian and I have been switching out. You’re a very still sleeper, but the bacta needed to be changed and we don’t have a spare bacta tank.”

Phrim made a noncommittal sound under her breath, and looked around for her clothes. Finding them was easy, the wonders of familiarity and slightly Force-reactive tags sewn into the necks. No shirt, she had – wait.

“These aren’t my clothes?”

“No, the clothes you were wearing, except the cloaks were pretty well  trashed by the time they got to the state where we could clean them. Chirrut went and found some new clothes for you. He said he knew that there’d be some struggle for you, but – _oh_ ,” he said, his sentence trailing off softly as Phrim pulled her clothes over to her in a leisurely display of her Force ability.

“I need to speak to Chirrut Îmwe. I have…business with him from the Luka Sene. I have travelled long and far too far to not meet with him after all this time. And I need…I need to thank him. For the clothes. He tagged them well,” she said, pulling her new clothes on over her body, dressing quickly, uncaring of her relative lack of clothing in front of another person.

Luke did not say anything until she stood. With a hiss, Phrim felt out her injured knee, wincing and stretching her leg out to try and get the muscles there to try relax the joint. She stretched slightly, letting the Force rush through her body, feeling out where the injuries were, what was still hurt, and where her range of movement was limited. She didn’t need to rely on the Force to move as if she was uninjured.

She was, presumably, safe here – or at the very least so injured and tired that if she was not safe, there was nothing she could do about it to turn that around.

So she could relax. Take a deep breath. Unwind.

“Yeah, but don’t you want to get something to eat first?”

Phrim reached up to touch her face, feeling the loss of her mask something fierce. It was equal parts comforting to wear, and a part of her day-to-day, and not wearing it was…uncomfortable. Not to mention, plenty of non-Miraluka were unnerved by the sight of empty eye sockets.

“I think Cassian was working on fixing up your mask. We’ll go see him first, if that makes things better?”

“Yeah, I know people get weird about the whole…blank eye sockets. I’d hate to unnerve people.”

“Oh, I think you look great, don’t worry!”

Luke beamed at her, the Force around him lighting up again. Phrim…knew he was being kind, but he believed what he was saying, all the way through him. He was a rare sort of sentient, someone who lit up the Force that strongly would need to be.

“…Thank you, Luke. I’ll follow behind you?”

It was rare for Phrim to describe someone as “bounding out of the room in excitement” but that was a pretty accurate description for Luke as he lead her out of the room and then through the Rebel base. Quietly, she followed behind him, taking stock of what was happening around her, but staying subdued.

* * *

“Cassian, hey! Phrim woke up and wanted to come see you about her mask, are you busy?”

Cassian looked up from the meeting he was having with a few rougher-looking people who worked on the fringes of the Rebellion. They were standing to the side of one of the lesser-used hangars, going over something of importance between them all. Phrim wasn’t going to try and get involved, she really…had had enough of war and war-time for a while. Besides, as a lone Miraluka, she really was not all that useful to anyone in a fight unless they had already been engaged.

He grinned when he saw Phrim, stepping back from his work and moving towards her.

“Hey, good to see you up and around, ‘Luka, you were out for a bit, there. See you’ve met Luke,” Cassian said congenially, not drawing too close, keeping a respectful, if friendly, distance.

“Yeah, ray of sunshine incarnate, actually. Pleasant guy. Do you have my – mask, thank you,” she said, trying for professional, but so tired that she reached for the mask before even thinking about.

She was just so, so tired.

He pressed her mask into her hands, and, startled, she looked down at it.

“You…you repaired it?”

Yes, it felt…fixed. Not all the way, some of the material was wrong, new, different, but where there had been tears, she felt nearly-invisible stitches. Broken beads had been carefully repaired, filled in with…something smooth, and cold to her touch. The seams were subtle, but present. But care had been taken. The parts that had been mesh, torn, where the delicate knotwork had been undone, she felt new knots now, in patterns that were not the same. New, but familiar.

Tying her mask back on, like she had done so many times before, feeling new fabric, new stitches, just _new_ , but still familiar, and the comfort of it washed over her in a rush. She felt more herself with her mask on, less vulnerable, less imposing. She was Miraluka, still. If, just, one that was without a home, without a family, and without a love.

Ow. Feelings hurt.

“Thank you, Cassian.”  
­ _Sorrow, glimmer of hope, precious thing returned, thank you_.

Next to her, Luke rocked back on his heels. He turned, mouth opening, but Cassian and Phrim both held their hands up to him.

“In private, Luke, not now. Show her the food hall, get her situated, she’s got her own rooms now, make sure the req officer knows what to get her, all that. Just like anyone else.”

Luke nodded, looking up at Phrim, who, now that they were standing side by side, was a good head or so taller than him. She gestured, vaguely, for him to take the lead. She had no idea where she was going, and in all honesty, she hadn’t been paying much attention, so if someone asked her to get back to Cassian’s room, she wouldn’t be able to.

Luke, excited to have a thing to do, took her by the hand and pulled her along behind him, waving over his shoulder to Cassian, and then letting go of her hand as soon as they were a bit away from the group.

“I heard the thing you said in the Force! I’m sorry, I don’t know if that’s eavesdropping or –“

“No, no, not eavesdropping, I’m just…I just forgot what it was like to be around other Force-sensitive people. It took a while to get used to the inverse. Coming back around, is surprisingly difficult again.”

“What do you mean?”

“My native language is mostly spoken through the Force, so communicating entirely in vocalizations is…unusual for me. I got used to speaking without being heard, then Cassian began becoming familiar enough with me to hear me, and then, now, you. You will hear a lot of this. Please know that it is just part of how I speak. Most of my words are layered with other emotions.”

“But not right now?”

“Well, no, I’m being careful not to, I am trying to keep the two separate, but…if you’d like? I can let more…bleed through. It can be a lot for people unused to it, but it is how things _are_ at h…on planet.”

He made an awed sound under his breath, staring up at her with a smile.

“I want to learn. Can you teach me?”

His earnestness, keen and unapologetic, touched her. She looked at him carefully, letting her presence in the Force wash over him. No holds barred, everything she was, everything she had been, everything she _could_ be, all in one brief flash of pressure.

“Maybe. Can you be taught?”

The question, coupled with how _much_ there was of her in the Force stunned him, and for a long, long moment he didn’t move.

“…Yes. I can,” he said, finally, his back straight, and jaw set.

Phrim regarded him carefully, taking stock of him exceptionally keenly. He was interesting, now. More so now than previously, because open-heartedness was one thing, but that inner switch being flipped…intrigued her.

“Why do you think that I should teach you?” she asked, nodding him forward, urging him to keep moving.

He took the hint, moving along, leading her through the base. She took mental notes as they walked, watching him just as carefully as he justified himself to her.

“I do not have a teacher. I need one. I know I need to learn, and there is much out there that I do not understand. I am the last Jedi…or at least that’s what Yoda said. So…I want to learn. I have never met anyone else but Yoda and Ben who had any control in the Force who wasn’t…trying to kill me. Everyone else who could have taught me, and who was teaching me, is dead. I want to learn. I know there is more to learn. I want to learn.”

Phrim nodded along as he spoke, listening carefully to his words, and how things echoed in the Force around him. She nodded politely to the people they passed, doing her level best not to listen in on the whispers that followed her. Some of them obviously knew about her from Cassian’s stories and it seemed that there had been a pretty even split about who had believed him about meeting a Miraluka…amongst other things, and who had thought he was full of bantha shit.

And now she was walking through their base, hands clasped behind her back, clearly engaged in some sort of somewhat serious conversation with Luke Skywalker, who, if Phrim was reading things correctly, was something of a _big deal_ to most of the people in the Rebellion. Interesting, all around.

The Requisitions Officer worked quickly and efficiently, because they clearly had far, far more important things to tend to than finding one more place for one more person to sleep. The location was secured, no apologies given for its location near the second most active hangar, but when Phrim noted, quietly, that she really only needed a pad to sleep on, and her cloak was more than enough of a blanket for her, she really did not need anything else besides a few small hygiene products and a sewing kit, they seemed relieved.

Not that rebels often had long lists, but pressures were still apparent in the supply line. Phrim did not want to put stress anywhere, and well and truly, most everything in her day to day, she could handle with the Force. It was not particularly comfortable to do so, but she had spent…a while, with Kelahna, and she had hardly provided anything to Phrim. There was much she could do with the Force, if she had to, and she did not want the _now_ to be distracted with banalities like that.

It could wait.

She could find some use she could provide these people and earn those things, those small comforts. it would feel good to do so after so long of doing nothing but…hurting.

The Officer nodded, gathered a small bundle of whatever could truly be spared, and had it sent to Phrim’s small room, handing her a little chip-key to allow her some small modicum of privacy. She nodded her thanks, and turned back to Luke.

“I think there was something mentioned of food?”

He nodded, turning and using his chin to point out the direction they were going to head in. Phrim inclined her head in acceptance, and followed along. Luke led her on a rather meandering tour through the place, pointing out interesting things, like the old architecture, the historical significance behind where they were in, why he was excited to be here, and she even learned a little about how and why he had gotten roped into all of this.

“And you, you were the one who saved Rogue One!” he said, interrupting his given timeline of the story, clearly excited to talk about this

“Yes. That was me.”

“How did you fly without eyes? I know the Force is…vast and all that, but to get in and out while a planet was being destroyed, pick up people from discrete points and avoid all of those Imperial ships, would have taken a crew of –“

“Not having eyes gives me a distinct advantage when I fly, though, admittedly, that excursion taxed me pretty severely. It took a long nap and a lot of comfort food to feel myself again. But I knew it needed to be done, and as an exile, my life really does not have meaning or direction. Saving lives of people in danger was a good way to go out, if that was the day that I was returned and made One with the Force again.”

Luke made a humming sound under his breath, nodding along.

“I can understand that. I felt the Force when I made the final run on the Death Star. Everything felt…right. I understood. I can understand what you mean, I think. A little bit, at least. Not quite the same, I know but-“

“No, pretty much the same thing. Big things, small things, they are all the same. The differences are all within the line of sight. Which I don’t have. So…it’s all the same. To me. To you. You just have to see beyond what the limits of your body experiences.”

It was easy for her to say these things, because she was already down one of her senses, she had to rely on the Force for. She realized that it would be harder for someone born with all of their senses to fall into reliance on the Force for all things, but it was the only advice she could give.

“Old Ben _was_ trying to teach me that. Had me trying to deflect stun bolts with a lightsaber, and Yoda had me doing similar things but it doesn’t always make sense to me.”

Phrim nodded.

“Understandable. You haven’t ever really had to _not_ see with your eyes. But if I do not use the Force, I do not see. If I do not trust the Force, I cannot walk. That is the sort of dependence and comfort you need to cultivate if you want to understand what I am.”

They were drawing close to where food was distributed, Phrim could smell it on the air. Her stomach gave a sympathetic growl. It had been a long, long time since she had real food, and even if it was reconstituted, dehydrated somesuch, she was not too bothered as long as she could eat until she was not hungry any more.

“I want to be a Jedi,” Luke said with a air of content finality. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get there.”

Phrim hummed under her breath.

“You’ll have to find a Jedi, then. I am not one of their Order. I can teach you some of what I know, and impart whatever knowledge I have that is appropriate for outsiders to know, and help you however I can, but I am not a Jedi, and listening to me won’t make you one, either.”

That seemed to take Luke aback, and he stopped, looking to her.

“What do you mean? You use the Force, and you’re not a Sith – you’re _not_ a Sith, right?”

“Ashla and Bogan are both influences on how I move and feel in the Force, but no, I am not a Sith. I do not follow their tenements either. I am simply a Force-user. That does not mean anything at all.”

She shrugged a shoulder. A tray of food – hot, some of it rehydrated, others apparently freshly cooked, for which Phrim was eternally grateful. She bowed her head, considered what would be appropriate, settled on a muted “Thank you”, but the server had already turned their attention to the next person in the line. She and Luke found a place to sit, and she got comfortable, folding a leg underneath her and stretching her back out.

“Besides, there is more to the Force than either one of those paths. You cannot only choose one. It is not good for you, is not good for the world, and more important, it leads to the sorts of things that doomed the Jedi and Sith both. My planet sequestered ourselves, not to protect ourselves from the Sitha – sorry, Sith – but to keep the Jedi from coming and trying to steal our children again. Before the Empire, before we picked up our lives and moved to an entirely different planet and then worked truly miraculous level of Force manipulation to hide our planet and our people from the Jedi and Sith alike, it was the Jedi we were more afraid of. Not the Sith. Evil is not always wearing black, and white is not always pure.”

Phrim turned her attention to her food, leaving Luke to mull over what she had said. While she, personally, had never met a Jedi – they had been gone from the Miraluka home planet for far longer than Phrim had been alive, she still knew all the histories.

And it was _exceptionally_ hard to lie in the histories. There was no way to lie about the children who had been stolen to join some order, who would come home and try and to steal more when they had been trained, their Force-signatures changed and altered to be nearly unrecognizable.

It was a true tragedy, something that had torn at Phrim as she had looked at the remains of her people and wondered if they could recover from the generations lost to the Jedi’s need to have more go towards the Light and be trained to abhor the Dark. She could not imagine what it would be like if she did not have both Ashla and Bogan in her life…Light and Dark, Dark and Light. It was part and parcel to her whole being.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Luke said, finally, peering up at her, as if expecting a reprimand. Phrim remained silent, watching him carefully. “Do you mean that the Light side of the Force is just as bad as the Dark or –“

She waved him off, and then with a quick glance around the tables, pulled a salt shaker and a small cube of sugar over. She poured salt into the palm of one of her hands, and crushed the sugar cube up in the other. Carefully, she cupped her hands together, and ground the salt and sugar together, letting the granules fall to the table between them.

“Which is salt, and which is sugar, Luke?” she asked. “If I draw a line here, between the pile I’ve made, and tell you _this_ half is salt, and _this_ half is sugar, knowing what you know about how they started out do you believe me?”

Luke’s brows drew down and he reached out to touch his fingertip to his mouth, then to the pile of salt-sugar to his left. Carefully, he touched it to his tongue. He didn’t pull a face, or flinch away from it, but contemplated it all very, very carefully.

“But the Dark-?”

He let his sentence hang.

Phrim shrugged.

“Is it an enemy or a friend in the shadows behind you?”

“Hm. I…I understand. I think. Things are more complicated than they appear to be, and…yeah, alright. I have to think about this.”

She grinned.

“Good, that’s the right answer. Because, eventually, you will learn how to tell salt from sugar and no sight will deceive you.”

Her hand waved over the two separate piles and individual grains sorted themselves out. They skated across the table, skittered through the air, and within moments, there were two distinct piles. Without eyes, it was hard for her to fix Luke with a stern look, and without him being used to how Force-Sight felt and moved through the world around him, it was quite impossible for her to rely on any of the old ways she had trained younger Miraluka.

“Don’t taste. Don’t touch. Which is salt, and which is sugar?”

He blinked down at the two piles, elbows on the table. Silence stretched on, and Phrim finished her meal, watching him all the while. He did not say anything, even as she moved to clear  her tray and return to where he was sitting.

Luke looked up at her, brows together, face scrunched in deep thought before, like a wave breaking tide, understanding washed over him.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Phrim bowed her head in an exceptionally graceful movement. There were any number of correct answers, but that was the most correct of them.

“Correct, besides I can’t tell them apart either,” Phrim said, her smile growing wider.

Luke laughed, and got up from the table. Prim followed behind.

“Oh, it’s the guest we were watchin’, huh kid?” a new voice said.

A human male, roughly her height or so, swaggered up to them. He seemed halfway familiar to her, like an echo of something, some _one_ she had seen before.

“Hey Han, yeah! This is Phrim. I was just showing her around.”

Phrim inclined her head in a half bow.

“Nice to meet you. You were one of the people who kept watch while I slept, aren’t you? One of the Force-sensitives.”

“Oh, hah, no, not Force-stuff, not for me. Just lucky. Everyone else complained of headaches, I didn’t get them, thought I’d help out, since it seemed important. Good to see you up and around again.”

“That’s…not…true. But I can understand wanting to believe that,” Phrim said, slowly, as if judging the words carefully before speaking them. “Anyway, it is nice to meet you while I am aware to understand that you are attempting to meet me.”

Han looked a little taken aback, but Phrim wasn’t too concerned with that. She knew what she felt, and if he didn’t want to acknowledge it, that was all well and good for him, plenty of people in the world around her didn’t want to necessarily acknowledge what it was in them that aided them when all else seemed lost. It was easier to just attribute it to luck.

“Yeah…nice to meet you too, I think,” he said, a little stunned.

“It’s always nice to meet me, I’m fantastic,” Phrim said with a grin, wiggling her eyebrows at Han.

He laughed, startled by the bravado out of nowhere. Phrim shrugged a shoulder and turned her attention back to Luke.

“What’s next, then? Is Chirrut around, I…actually do still need to talk to him. All of this…all of it, was so that I could talk to him, but if he’s not here, I can wait. I’m sure there’s something I can do to help you understand more of the Force around you. Not as a Jedi, just as someone who experiences it, yeah?”

She tried, she tried so hard to keep the edge of sorrow out of her voice, but it was a pitched battle. Phrim was still heartbroken, she was still bitter and hurt and aching all the way through, and the brief flash of _having_ something she thought she had lost only made her feel everything else so much more keenly.

Shaking her head, she did her best not to think about it, turning her attention back to Luke and keeping it _there_. There would be time later, in her own room (her _own_ room) to feel everything that roared in her chest in the moment. But for now she could do without the crushing feelings of failure, the wailing of her sorrow, all of it was _so much_ but she pushed it aside. For a little while longer she could pretend. Luke was not so strong that he –

“Why are you sad? What happened?” Luke asked, reaching out, as if to touch her arm, before pulling back and away, aware of the possible infringement on her personal space not being appreciated.

“Ah. You are stronger than I anticipated, Luke. My apologies, I did not mean to make my own emotions so loud. Do not worry. I am…far from home. That’s all.”

He looked concerned.

“Well that’s a bad lie, isn’t it?” Han groused, crossing his arms and looking at her. “Cassian was supposed to be coming with two people, and then there was only one. The medics even talked about there having been another body when you had been picked up but there was only the one.”

Phrim tilted her head to the side, looking at Han.

“My lover died. She was not a good person. In fact, she was a very _bad_ person and it took me half a universe, the loss of her, and the loss of a good part of my faith in the greater Goodness of the universe as a whole for me to see that. I released her body to the Force. It was the only thing I could bear to do for her, as any further mourning would be inappropriate for someone who had been exiled from the home we had once shared, and, unhealthy or not, I still loved her, and I still miss her. Does that answer your prying personal question of a near perfect stranger?”

She kept her tone light, matching Han’s, beat for beat, but she knew the expression on her face had slid close and closer to a sneer.

His hands came up defensively, trying to ward off the words and the ill-intent.

“Woah woah now I didn’t –“

“Mean it like that, I know. It was a bad lie, but maybe allow a stranger a sweet lie instead of insisting on the brutality of truth? Otherwise you might touch pain you’re ill equipped to handle.”

There was silence for a long moment as he considered what she had said and she stared him down, waiting for whatever else would be coming. There was always something more with these sorts of things.

“It’s weird, is all. You came out of nowhere, Cassian _insists_ you’re the pilot who got them out of that kriffing mess on Scarif, and everything he has said of you has sounded more and more like a tall and taller tale. I don’t believe in the Force – it’s a bunch of hoopla that doesn’t mean anything to anyone.”

“You are free to believe as you’d like. Won’t change the truth of the matter, now will it.”

He tilted his head to the side, and she mirrored him grinning.

“You’re…very difficult.”

“I get that a lot, believe me, Han. You’re far from the first person to come to that completely new and wholly unexpected assessment of my personality. It’s one of my hallmarks, in fact – being just _really_ fucking difficult to deal with. In all matters.”

He laughed.

“Alright, we’re gunna get along just fine.”

“Oh, and here I was worried people wouldn’t like me. Whatever would I do, a loner out in the great wide universe who doesn’t know any of you?” Phrim snapped back, smiling.

The back and forth, the repartee, the easy sort of banter that passed between people came easily to her. She remembered what this all felt like. Even if it had been a long while since she had been with _her_ people, the rhythms of this dance were painfully and peacefully familiar. She enjoyed this. More than she remembered having done so, but…

Ah, another time.

Luke slung an arm around her shoulders, not quite managing to get his arm up high enough to drape across the top of them, but he settled for an excited side-hug of her upper body. In the Force, he was overjoyed, radiating happiness and the simple, well-intentioned pleasure of someone who was, genuinely enjoying your presence and was excited to spend more time with you. It had been a long while since Phrim had felt something like that.

There was nothing that Luke really wanted from her. He wanted to be near her, just because he thought she was interesting and exciting and…it was nice. To be wanted.

She missed Cassian.

“I think Chirrut and Baze are actually off planet, so you will have to wait, but for now, would you like to see the rest of the compound? Or just –“

“Yeah, show me around, I have nothing better to do with my day. Lead on. I’ll follow. I could use a stretch of my legs, honestly.”

Luke grinned and pulled her along. After a moment, Han followed behind the two of them.

* * *

It was hard to say she had _forgotten_ about anything. Most of her physical wounds hadn’t even healed, let alone the mental and emotional ones, but Phrim was…feeling better. Slowly, what had hurt, hurt less, and even slower, she started to build up a callus around her heart where the raw feelings still lived.

She was doing better.

Having her own place, having even a small room that was partways storage and partways where she slept was still better than what she had had for so long that it was…comforting. Some days, when everything was bad, she would go out and get food for herself, before returning to her room and just sitting, quietly, on her own.

She told Luke it was meditation, but sometimes it was really just sitting and _feeling_  everything she had put aside for so long. When everything was a fight for survival, you did not have the actual luxury of acknowledging or working out any of your feelings. You just hid them. Pushed them away. Down. Back. Anywhere but the forefront of the mind.

Especially when the person who had you held captive could read minds and truly, honestly did not care for any discomfort caused by her process. Phrim had not had the simple, quiet ease of just being with her own thoughts, within her own mind, with nothing else to intrude for a long, long time.

And then, when she didn’t want to think about it, when she wanted nothing but to drown in the feelings of being around so many other people. People who didn’t know her, who knew nothing but what they thought were tall tales about her and just experience the world, and the way the Force vibrated in it all.

She started feeling…more like she was used to being.

Which of course meant it was the moment when she felt the ripples in the Force, foretelling a presence she had been told to go look for. She almost turned tail and left. Almost. Almost almost almost her entire life was a series of fucking almost, but Phrim committed.

To everything she needed to commit to and just _so_ many things she did not need to.

She took a deep breath and turned away from the group she had been walking with. What she needed was still in her room, kept safe in anticipation of this moment. It had been so long, however much as she had prepared for it, she could still feel anxiety burning in her chest. What if, after all of this, Chirrut…didn’t want to talk to her? If, after everything she had been through, everything she had done, it did not go well…Phrim just didn’t know what she’d do with herself.

There would be nothing else for her. After this was done, there was no more _home,_ no more _elsewhere_ , there was only hat she was experiencing in the moment, with no path forward, nothing to _do_.

The thought was sobering, if not outright terrifying.

She lifted the heavy cloak, a gift for Chirrut from the Sene. She had her own, now bearing two scars – one from defending Cassian, one that saved her from the same blast that ended the life of her lover and abuser. Chirrut’s cloak was blessedly untouched, and chased in scarlet, which already felt appropriate, from what she knew about him.

The heaviness in her heart would not leave her. She was beleaguered, worn down, and nervous.

But she had a job to do, and she would do it. Because she was, after all of this, throughout everything else, a Miraluka of the Luka Sene. Nothing could take that away, not even the lack of a home, the lack of _everything_ that had once defined her. She was a Miraluka. Still. Always. Forever.

The lack of eyes, the beating drums of the Force, of Ashla, of Bogan in her blood, all of these would never leave her, even if she was never able to return to her homeland. She was Miraluka, she was of the Luka Sene, and she had a job to do. She could look at the shattered pieces of her life later, right now she needed to take her pain, put it to the side and do what she had been asked to do.

What came next did not matter. What mattered was what was happening now. What mattered was that she needed to remain calm, remain in control, and more importantly – remain herself.

Whoever that was.

With a confidence she did not feel, she checked to make sure that the cloak was folded appropriately before setting it down so she could affix her own cloak around her shoulders. Phrim could make herself ignore the fact that it still smelled of Kelahna’s death, because she was a steely sort. Besides, Kelahna was with the Force now. There would never really be a moment where she wasn’t feeling the press of her touch on the world around her.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself, before picking up Chirrut’s cloak, squashing whatever remained of her self-consciousness behind the veneer of professionalism. There was nothing she could not do. She was resolute. There was nothing she could not do.

Including this. No matter how it hurt, she could do it.

One more breath, and then she was going to –

“Phrim?”

A voice from the door to her room broke her reverie, and, startled, she turned quickly towards the door, broadening her awareness back out to where it generally was. There was someone in her doorway – yes, she knew that because otherwise a voice would not have come from there, but what she had not expected was for it to be –

“Chirrut Îmwe, I…” she sighed, shoulders slumping forward, all the great words she had practiced while her ship flew her through space to somewhere, anywhere, to try and find him, vanished. “Hello. I am Phrimelage Iffrediit, Nanahau. I was sent from my home to find you. To present a gift. For what you have done, you have been noticed. We… _they_ wished to impart a gift, recognition, solidarity. I was sent to deliver words and…assistance. It’s been a while. A long while.”

She shook her head.

“My apologies. This has been a long, long time coming and everything else seems a little less important now. This is for you. It is cortosis weave. Heavy, but you will fear nothing. The-“

Chirrut took a bold step forward and wrapped her into a single-armed hug. She dropped her forehead to his shoulder, but did not relax. It was too much. She was supposed to be the one to offer support. She was sent to be support, not to take it. But…but…

She wrapped an arm around his waist. The comfort was nice.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, quietly.

“I…yes. I think I do. Would you listen, or should I find someone else? I don’t want to…”

“Sit, sit. Talk. You are burdened.”

Phrim sighed and motioned backwards, to her sparse bed, pressing the cloak into Chirrut’s hands as she stepped away.

“It is a long story, and none of it is relevant. I am heartsick, yes, but it is nothing.”

“It is not nothing. You came to find me. I have found you, now, I would rather like to know who it was that chased me across the stars, not to mention, saved me and my companions from death.”

Scars traced their way up Chirrut’s face, signs of the last battle that Bacta had not been able to wash away. He was a handsome man, resonant in the Force, a presence that, now that she was aware of completely, she understood why it was that the Sene had found him, and sent her after him.

His touch was gentle, a soft press of his fingertips to her forearm.

“I…alright.”

So she talked.

Of a great many things.

Who she had been before she had left her planet, she talked of her parents, how she had been raised, about how everything she had done and trained for had always been in the service of the Sene, and when she had chosen to leave, it had been something that no one had expected. Everything. Once she started talking about it, it was so, so hard to stop. Everything came out of her, and as she talked, the pain rose in a crescendo, before slowly ebbing away.

She did not stop until she had caught Chirrut up to the present day. It took a long, long while. But no one bothered them, no one came to check on them, and he just sat, quietly, next to her, bearing witness to her pain, and her story. That simple comfort made everything else so much easier.

It felt good to talk about what had happened, without being interrupted, without being asked a thousand interjecting questions about what this, or that, or the other was. If she deigned to give explanation it was met with a polite, understanding, nod. If she did not, there was no pushing for more. She could call Kelahna Jheza, and have no questions asked. She did not need to say anything she did not want to.

Chirrut listened.

She understood him, why he had been chosen, why the Sene had wanted her to follow him and find him. This was someone who was so, so much more than they appeared to be. The Force, while not strong in him as it was in Luke, still ebbed and flowed through him.

He…she understood.

He understood her.

With a sigh, a long, agonizing sigh, she finished her story. It was…there was no more to her story now. This was the end of it. This conversation, this moment.

After this there was really nothing else. She was just Phrim, Miraluka exile. No quest, no mission, and Chirrut understood her story. It was more than she could really think of. To have nothing else. No Jheza, no mission, nothing. Just her. Out in the world. On her own. In the great wide Universe. Alone.

Chirrut reached out and covered her hands with his own, patting the back of her hand in a conciliatory manner.

“Well, then. Now you have the whole Universe to explore. Where do you want to start?”

Phrim looked at him. There was so much roaring in her ears, that the simple question took her aback. She…she could choose. Whatever she wanted to do. She could make the choice. She could do anything.

“Oh. I think I know.”

* * *

She waited until the night, until all the tasks were done. She had even asked Leia – _Princess_ Leia – if Cassian had anything else he was doing, and gotten a negative. Phrim remembered where his rooms were, even if she hadn’t visited them since she had woken up. There hadn’t been time, and more importantly, she had desperately not wanted to intrude upon him. Things were different now, they had to be because it was not just the two of them trapped in some hell hole anymore, nor was it two people running up against each other in the middle of the universe.

This was _his_ world, and she was something of an intruder in it. Clearly. He’d not come to see her, either, and she had taken that as the slight hint it was. Still.

She knew where she wanted to start.

There was only a moment of hesitation before she reached out to knock on Cassian’s door. She did not know what she was expecting from this, did not really even know what she wanted in any sort of specificity, just knew that she had begun the end of the last of her life with Cassian and she just wanted to figure out the start of her next life with him too. Whatever that meant.

So when he answered his door, bleary, hair mussed, shirt rucked, untucked, and looked up at her, her heart stilled. There was a beat between them. They looked at each other, a simple moment that passed between them.

He reached out to grab her by the back of her neck, pulling her against him in a crushing kiss. She moaned, surprised, but so, so thankful that _this_ was what she would start with. Phrim staggered after him, slamming the door shut behind them both. Cassian’s mouth worked across hers, his hands pushing her cloak off of her shoulders, to leave it puddled on the floor behind her.

“Kriffing _missed you_ ,” he gasped against her as her hands worked at his belt, the Force tearing it out of his loops, sending it flying somewhere behind her.

The back of his leg hit the side of his bunk, and he fell back into it, pulling Phrim down on top of him. She didn’t pause for even a moment, following him down greedily, nipping his bottom lip, soothing the bite with a swipe of her tongue before her tongue worked into his mouth.

Cassian moaned, arching his back up against her body, grinding his hips against hers, just trying to take whatever pleasure from her body that he could steal. The Force roared in his ears, her presence coming back to the forefront of his mind. He missed this, missed the way the Force filled up all the empty places in him, missed how her body came _alive_ under his hands, how she breathed his name with reverence, how she reacted so beautifully, how she _anticipated_ him.

He wished he could really articulate how goddamn beautiful he found it when someone could anticipate his moves. With a sigh, Phrim shucked her shirt, letting his hands roam up her chest. He cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs brushing her nipples. She shuddered against him, dropping her head to his shoulder, mouthing at his neck, leaving a new mark, biting down on the thick muscle where his neck met his shoulder until he cried out.

She caged both of his wrists in one hand, stretching his arms out above his head, pulling him taut underneath her, dragging her mouth back up to his, kissing him _hard_ , desperate, demanding. He hooked a leg over her hip, rolling his body against hers, chasing pressure and friction.

Cassian had missed this.

Missed this so bad.

Missed her.

She pulled his pants down, her hand loosely fisting his already _so_ hard cock, dragging her hands across his body, thumbing the head of his cock, smearing the slick of his precum all over. His eyes rolled and with grit teeth, he thrust up against her hand. Phrim purred his name against his neck, licking up the shell of his ear, hastily undoing her pants, kicking them off, hardly bothering to get even a little bit undressed. She did not need nudity, she needed Cassian.

With a hissed moan, Phrim sank down onto his cock.

He gasped for air, thrusting into her, rewarded with a breathy gasp. She kept her hand on his wrists, holding him down, but he **reached** for her in the Force, an image of her, without her mask on top of him.

Phrim wasn’t even startled, just ripped her mask from her face, flinging it over her shoulder and setting to work atop Cassian’s cock. There was no elegance in this, nothing easy or gentle, just friction and pleasure and a particularly desperate keening need.

He stared up at her, the air around her electric green shot through with curls of vibrant, shocking orange, and let everything in him _go_. He had missed her, he had ached for her company, he had wanted so much but not known how to approach her now that the situation was different. So he had waited, and she had come back to him and now, and _now_ , he was going to take what he missed from her.

This was not love, was not soul-bonding, was nothing but bodies, but Stars and Dust, Stars and _goddamn_ Dust, it felt good. That meant more than anything else could mean in that moment. He just wanted her, and she wanted him and it felt good, so they kept doing it. There was nothing elegant in it.

Bodies and pleasure and pleasures in bodies. Cassian and Phrim moved against each other, sighing out each other’s name. Whatever dark things that had happened no longer mattered. They had each other, they had this moment, they had everything that burned between them.

Cassian flexed his hips up into her depths, cumming with a gentle, breathless sigh. Atop him, Phrim shuddered, her body wracked with pleasure. He stared up at her, a smile twisting across his lips. She was stunning.

Carefully, he reached up to gather her down into his arms, pulling her to his side. Slowly, he pushed the rest of her clothes off of her body, as she did to him, kicking their clothes to the bottom of his bed as he wrapped his arms around her. She settled herself next to him, twining her legs with his and, before too long, falling asleep.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and followed her to sleep not long after.  

* * *

The universe has an odd way of cycling through itself. Phrim had spent so much of her life working towards a singular goal within the framing of the Luka Sene, and then thrown it all away to follow the one she loved across the stars. In doing so, she set into motion a thousand little splinters of reality and casuality that lead to _here_.

A Rebel base.

A madcap conglomerate of ideas to bring the world together and heal the scars the Empire had left on the universe, and now she was standing, laughing, among a group of engineers and technincians, as someone gave an amusing retelling of the last time the bunch of pilots had gone out on a skirmishing flight.

Phrim felt…comfortable. She still hurt, don’t misunderstand her, she hurt all the way through still, and it really was only getting better by fractions every day. But it was getting better and she _did_ feel more herself, like she was slowly coming out of whatever fugue state she had been in for so long.

She and Cassian had a brief conversation about What It Was between them, which thankfully short and easy. Neither of them were looking for commitment, but both of them agreed that they liked the other’s body. Liked how everything came alive in them when they touched. Liked how they understood something of one another.

But most of all.

They just liked that there was no expectation of more between them. They liked that they both understood what it was that they wanted from this. Friends, yes. She and Cassian were actually friends, but the sex was good and the feelings went no further than that. Both of them  knew what it was, both of them needed the healing that could be more easily found in the arms of another who accepted them as they were without any sort of need or desire for more.

It was comfortable.

Healthy, perhaps, but not in the way that a romance was. Healthy in just that this was the both of them needed. There was a great relief in that, in knowing that there was always _something_  here for them, in the other’s arms. It was good. Comforting.

Which was why she was so fucking startled when she _felt_ the Force bubble up around her, an identification from somewhere _else_ that came with no warning.

It was not Chirrut, and it was not Luke – she knew the both of them more than well enough by now to be able to identify them reaching out to contact her with no issue. Leia, even, had started to become more comfortable with this concept of just _reaching_ for Phrim, and Phrim showing up moments later. The odd passer-through who was Force-sensitive, she also knew. Even Han, who _insisted_ he was not Force-touched despite that being a very dumb and bold-faced lie had started to come to realize that if he just held out his will for her to be there, she’d come as well.

It wasnot the Force though, goodness no. She just knew how and when to be where he needed her. Weirdly all the time. But definitely wasn’t Force-stuff, she was just clever and very smart.

Phrim appreciated the halfway compliments in a roundabout way.

But the feeling of someone familiar but half-forgotten reaching out to her through the Force, and then retracting their touch before she could identify herself back, or ascertain just who it was, the presence was gone.

She made her dismissal from the conversation she was having look easy, trying her damndest not to indicate that she was upset or concerned in any way, because it could very, very well be nothing. It could have been just a hiccup. Sometimes these things happened. The Force was a many and multitudinous thing, she could not always anticipate what was just an occurrence or what was _actually_ happening.

But she needed to know. The touch felt familiar, a whisper of a life she had left behind her. And hope…hope was a dangerous thing to an exile.

There was something in the air, something resonating within the Force around her that wouldn’t leave her be, and the faster she moved, the faster it quickened in her chest. There was no tag-up of the sensation again, but there was a naggingly growing sense of urgency that started to pull her forward.

Before she realized it, she was in a full sprint towards the closest, and coincidentally largest, open area, casting her Force-Sight wider than she had done in a good long while, a net of only half-there sensing in a desperate bid to see what she could be missing. _Anything_ to prove the rising hope in her chest wrong.

She did not want to be thinking about the chances of _that_ , only to have what remained of her hopes crushed. She would far, far rather be wrong than –

Like a tide sweeping her legs out from under her, the glorious sensation of _knowing_ and _awareness_ rushed through her.

Phrim broke into the clearing, looking up despite absolutely not needing to direct her face towards anything in order to see it. Five ships swooped down, each pinging delightfully against her Force-senses. She didn’t need to even to read the way the Force pinged off the ships to know who it was. Who all had come.

The ships touched down, and while the Rebellion behind her geared up for a battle, terror and fear rippling through the people who had every right to fear that ships landing out of nowhere were a threat to them, Phrim strode forward, heart singing hope and praise and exultations.

One of the ships did not even get the chance to touch down all the way – the port opened and a body hurtled out of it. With an overjoyed sunburst-  
_Dawn breaking the horizon, seaspray bursting into the air, perfume in the night, stars against the blackness of space_ -  
The person hurtled towards Phrim and wrapped her into a massive bearhug.

Speaking her own language after so long felt like the first time she had been kissed by someone she loved.

“<Phrim! Phrim you are here, you are alive, and we _found_ you!! >”

She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry for the joy of it and buried her face in her friend’s neck.

“<Why did you leave, why are you hear, how – I am so happy, but how? How!?>”

There was laughter, and soon enough, she was enveloped in more hugs as the rest of _her team_ came to her. The conversations flowed easily, each voice overlaying the other. Like a group of people speaking all at once, it was beautiful cacophony of overlain voices and ideas.

She realized it could be overwhelming but it didn’t matter

“<We came for you, Phrim. We felt what happened. We came for you, of course we came for you, we will fight with you, for you, we missed you, of course we are here.>”

She relaxed into the touches, relaxed into the conversation, relaxed and let go of all the things that had been holding her back. Phrim took one long, slow, deep, breath.

This was…this was where she belonged.


End file.
